Douro

Amândio José da Silva, was born in Porto on April 11, 1923, and died there on July 27, 2000. He graduated in Painting at the Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto, with 20 points, having received several important awards, and joined its teaching staff between 1958 and 1993, the year in which he retired. He was the founder of the "Independentes" Group, which included, among others, Fernando Lanhas, Nadir Afonso, Garizo do Carmo, Artur Da Fonseca and Arlindo Rocha. He discovers the Douro and its mountains between 1948 and 1968, which will forever be present in his work, and whose appeal he also did not escape, among others, Augusto Gomes, Guilherme Camarinha, Júlio Resende, Sousa Felgueiras and Joaquim Lopes. But do not think that, in the case of Amândio Silva We are dealing with the “Representation” of the landscape. Before, and this was one of the quintessential aspects of Modernism – of Its Modernism -, we see its “Presentation”, with everything that involves the interpretation of History, the Mechanisms of painting, and Abstraction as another interpretation of the Real. Not “running” behind artistic currents, nor its History, Amândio Silva He left us a work of which one can say, like Amadeo de Souza-Cardozo, that he had “as many phases as the moon”. But always consistent with your life path.