Who was Ângelo de Sousa?
Ângelo de Sousa He was one of the protagonists of Portuguese artistic contemporaneity. The Portuguese artist was born on February 2, 1938, Maputo (Mozambique) was known for continually experimenting with new techniques in his works. Since sculptor, painter, educator and designer, Ângelo de Sousa It is seen as a scholar of color and light that explored minimalism in a radical way. Find out here more about the Portuguese artist.
The color and formalism in Ângelo de Sousa's painting
He began his artistic practice by painting, having declared that his discovery of painting had been, as Klee reported: "The color takes me." By choice it was always on the sidelines of neo-realistic controversies and debates about figuration and abstraction. Interested first, in the motivated reflections, the oriental engraving, the primitive and exotic arts and art brut, the expressionism, artists such as Klee and Kandinsky and by movements such as Color Field, the post painterly abstraction, the op and pop art .
These influences are visible in their painting, in which the colorful gesture gives way, from the 1970s, to large chromatic plans, generating geometric games, or forming ambiguous spatialities. Color and formalism, which seems to be born organically through the movement of the trace, are striking elements of its creative process, which is located in a minimalist sphere and extends to sculpture. The abstract paintings - once complex in 1967, are close to artists such as Sol Lewitt, due to the unfolding of airplanes, far from monochrome dryness. Indeed, the painting of Ângelo de SousaEven when it seems to have only one color, it is the result of a complex weaving of textures, in which the deep knowledge of the mechanisms and perceptual processes of color contributes to defining planes that articulate in folds and breaks.
Sculpture: the least known facet
Despite being the least known facet of the work of Ângelo de Sousa, the sculpture has taken on a decisive role in its artistic practice, which developed in articulation with drawing and painting. Molder underlines this relationship: 'From this totality statement results in a kind of evidence that drawing is everything and is in everything and that at the same time sculpture is the form of its continuation, as a space there for both dimensions.' And adds: “As in all areas of the work of Ângelo de Sousa Experimentation has always been before and the works let him guess. Take materials and seek to grasp their qualities, their properties and even their limitations, they are operations that all their work explains. ' According to Nuno Faria: “There is, in Ângelo's work, a predominance of experimentalism, a work in constant process. Revealing this aspect, it has brought to the space of the exhibition a whole set of experiences, objects found, models or models, things that may not yet sculpture, or that are a promise of sculpture, unnamed things. (Ângelo de Sousa. Sculpture, 2006, p. 31)
As pointed out by several authors, the work in sculpture of Ângelo de Sousa It results from an expanded understanding of this discipline: “If the first essays reveal themselves, in their experimentalism, still debtors of a sculptural lineage on the threshold of modernity –Rodin or Brancusi, for example - from 1964, the year the artist Systematically dedicates to sculpture work, the language of projects and parts that arise is clearly explained and can hardly be linked to both a particular influence or the “air of time”. («Difference and Repetition», Newsletter. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, No. 70, Feb. 2006, p. 18)
Experimentation in the career of Ângelo de Sousa
In fact, his practice, through experimentation, incorporated other means such as sculpture, drawing, film or photography. His career was marked by constant abandonment and returns, both to the techniques and the themes he explored. However, there are characteristics that have remained constant, such as the non -use of figuration, the economy of means and shapes, or the use of series as a means of experimenting variations on the same theme or initial idea, as with your plates sculptures, metal or folded and painted metal plates. “The restless movement of the film also emerges in metal sculpture from the 60s and 70s of the last century (the" small gadgets ", as the author calls them, first in acrylic and then aluminum), and the organic quality of the work It appears in the use of the body in photography and self-portrait ”, as Leonor Nazaré says.
Angelo de Sousa's career
It was divided intensely among art -painting, photography to sculpture -research and teaching. He was born in Mozambique, but since he has lived in Porto. Between 1955 and 1962 he studied painting at the Higher School of Fine Arts of Porto, and from 1962 to 2000, the year in which he became jublished as a full professor, he taught in the same school. In 1964 he was co -founder of the tree cooperative, Porto. He held his first exhibition in 1959, at the Gallery Disclosure, in Porto, alongside Almada Negreiros. Between 1967 and 1968 he attended, with a Calouste Gulbenkian and British Council Scholarship, St. Martin’s School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 1968 founded, with Armando ALVES, Jorge Pinheiro and José Rodrigues The group The Four Four (so called because everyone ended the degree with a maximum score of 20), which remained active until 1972. In 1977, he was one of the artists selected by Ernesto de Sousa to participate in the Zero Alternative Exhibition. His participation in the 13th São Paulo Biennial stands out in 1975, where he received an international prize, and at the Venice Biennial in 1978. In 1993, the Foundation of Serralves organized an anthological exhibition of its painting and drawing work and, In 2001, from his work of photography and cinema. In 2008, Ângelo de Sousa It represents Portugal at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennial, in partnership with Eduardo Souto Moura. In addition to the public sculpture held for the 3rd International Symposium on Contemporary Sculpture of Santo Tirso, in 1996, the work that performed for the atrium adjacent to the San Jose building stands out in 1996, in Avenida da Boavista, Porto, Porto, Porto, Porto, Porto, Porto , in 2006.
In this sense, to understand Angelo's sculpture it is important to consider practice in an expanded field, "whether geographically or temporally or mentally." More than presenting the artist's sculptures, the curator intended to "get into" his process: "make the work of the work, what gives rise to, the cause or the motto, is vital when we try to see the sculptural production of Ângelo de Sousa.» (Ângelo de Sousa. Sculpture, 2006, p. 31)
