Manuel Pereira da Silva

Manuel Pereira da Silva (1920–2003): a sculptor between realism and abstraction

Manuel Pereira da Silva was born in Porto on December 7, 1920. He attended the Porto School of Fine Arts, where he completed the Sculpture course in 1943 with distinction, having received the awards António Teixeira Lopes and António Soares dos Reis. He completed his education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1947 and 1948, where he encountered European modernist movements.

His work is characterized by a visual language that begins with the human figure and transforms it into simplified, geometric, and volumetric forms. He worked with a variety of materials, such as bronze, stone, and ceramic, exploring the balance between realism and abstraction. He was a pioneer of abstract sculpture in Portugal.

A drawing and visual education teacher between 1949 and 1991, Pereira da Silva also had a strong connection to teaching and artistic development. He participated in the first exhibitions of the "Grupo dos Independentes" (Independent Group), alongside artists such as Júlio Resende, Nadir Afonso and Fernando Lanhas, contributing to the aesthetic renewal of Portuguese art in the post-war period.

He was the author of numerous public works, among which the following stand out: the sculpture A Maternidade (1958) in Praça do Marquês do Pombal in Porto; the granite bas-relief in the Palace of Justice in Porto (1961); the bust of Ulysses S. Grant in Bolama, Guinea-Bissau (1955); frescoes in the Church of Santa Luzia, in Viana do Castelo; and several monuments and commemorative medals in Vila Nova de Gaia, Paredes, Gondomar and Freamunde.

He was part of the so-called “African Generation”, having worked in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, at a time when Portuguese artists, free from the cultural pressures of the Estado Novo, contributed to a modern architecture integrated with art.

Throughout his life, he participated in dozens of collective and solo exhibitions and received several distinctions, including the Gold Medal for Cultural Merit, awarded by the Vila Nova de Gaia City Council in 2000. His last exhibition during his lifetime was “Envolvências…”, which opened in 2011 at the Teixeira Lopes House-Museum.

Manuel Pereira da Silva He left an artistic legacy marked by a constant search for new languages and the fusion of classical rigor and modernist freedom. His work remains an essential reference point for 20th-century Portuguese sculpture.