The Portuguese Artist's Alphabet José de Guimarães

The artist José de Guimarães and the alphabet

José de Guimarães is an unavoidable figure in the history of Portuguese visual arts. With more than 60 years of career, he has a vast and remarkable work in painting, sculpture and other creative activities. Travels through Europe, Africa and Asia defined his career by stimulating the development of a universal language. For several decades, each of these cultures enriched their production, emerging from this intercultural interaction the creation of the alphabet. Find out in this article how the artistJosé de Guimarães created this creative and linguistic element.

José de Guimarães

Who is it José de Guimarães?

José Maria Fernandes Marques was born on November 25, 1939, in the city of Guimarães, he entered the Military Academy and the Engineering course at the Technical University of Lisbon in 1957, thus leaving his hometown. The following year, he began studying painting and drawing with Teresa de Sousa and Gil Teixeira Lopes. He attended the engraving courses at the Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses where he met Hogan, Júlio Pomar, Almada Negreiros, Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, among others.

He left for Paris in 1961, when he came into contact with fauve painting, which ended up influencing him in the future. It was in this year that he adopted the pseudonym ofJosé de Guimarães, in honor of his homeland. The following year he traveled to Italy, where he saw the works of Michelangelo, Morandi and Giorgio de Chirico. In 1967, in Africa, he joined a military service commission in Angola. It was there that his interest in African art began, thus initiating his foray into the world of collages. During his stay in Luanda, he also published the Manifesto to non-conformist painters - Arte Disturbadora - where he stated: “Get closer to life and use the materials of our time. Give beauty to steel, aluminum, concrete and plastic.”Subsequently, he traveled to Japan, China, Mexico and Tunisia. It was from these paths in search of new artistic realities and the influences of 20th century art thatJosé de Guimarães collected data and diverse perspectives for the creation of his works.

“His career would be defined by the discovery of distant and unusual regions, from Africa to Japan, from Mexico to China. Each of these cultures encouraged him to develop a universal language and transmit an imaginary universe that, after all, revives the memory of Portuguese history itself, made of enriching relationships with distant countries".

alphabet ofJosé de Guimarães 

The alphabet

Fascinated with the power of the word in tribal societies and ethnological study, between 1970 and 1974, while doing military service,José de Guimarães  created “The Alphabet of Symbols”. This set of 150 works of painting and sculpture, which unites the real, the pictorial and the imaginary, represents a complex system of codes developed from the pictograms used by the Ngoygos ethnic group of the enclave of Cabinda, together with Portuguese civilization. This creative alphabet is practically similar to the illustrations present on ancient maps at the time of the discoveries, in which monsters, plants and mythological figures that appeared in unknown parts were represented.

José de Guimarães proposes with this alphabet a new semiotic reading of the world by reinterpreting various symbols, formerly hybrid, abstract or geometric. There are no letters represented, only drawings that represent stories from the artist's imagination and the culture of the Ngoygos from the enclave of Cabinda. In this way, this alphabet creates an intercultural experience with elements decomposed by the vision of two cultures.José de Guimarães produced an element of communication to the world, without words, only drawings. The advantage and fascination of this is the freedom it instills in the spectator's thinking, by allowing each design and symbol to be interpreted with different possibilities, stories and questions at an aesthetic, philosophical and even identity level. When analyzing the creative production ofJosé de Guimarães, we realize that this element of communication was the starting point, as it is possible to identify various symbols of the alphabet in his fascinating pieces, whether painting or sculpture, as in “Ilha dos Amores”, “Circus", among others. Discover the different parts available on the P55 with alphabet symbols.

"Islands of Love" byJosé de Guimarães