FIGURES OF PORTUGUESE HISTORY AND CULTURE
Francisco Vieira, the Portuense, was one of the most outstanding names of Portuguese painting of the eighteenth century, a precursor of neoclassicism. His work covers a variety of themes, from religion to landscapes, including mythological scenes, engravings and drawings.
He was the most widely travelled artist of his time, which profoundly enriched his education. In Italy, Germany and England he became acquainted with the great masters. Upon his return to Portugal, he shared with Domingos Sequeira the status of painter of the regent D. João VI.
Born in Porto in 1765, he was awarded first place in Drawing in the competition of the Academy of the Nude in the Capitoline, in Rome. He painted «Old Man's Head» (1793), which he exhibited at his election for professor at the Parma Academy of Fine Arts.
He died, in 1805, while engaged in the painting «Duarte Pacheco defending the Pass of Cambalão in Cochim», intended for Casa das Descobertas of Mafra Royal Palace.
Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage pontificates in the history of Portuguese literature, recalled as the greatest lyrical poet of the eighteenth century. An exquisite writer of sonnets, his creative genius and irreverent personality is invariably associated to the memory of his name.
Born in Setúbal in 1765, from an early age he showed a rebellious and bohemian nature, features which made him popular, but also proved to be his downfall on various occasions, such as when he was expelled from the Academy of Fine Arts, imprisoned at Limoeiro gaol and later incarcerated by the Holy Inquisition.
Alongside romantic themes, he was distinguished for his satirical style, daring to criticise the all powerful of his time. Provocative, he wrote verses on sensitive topics, such as eroticism and freedom.
He died in 1805, merely aged 40 years old.
Ramalho Ortigão made a clear stance as a extremely prominent figure in Portuguese cultural life during the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Author of an encompassing and multidisciplinary bibliography, he is one of the most important writers of the Generation of 70.
Born in Porto in 1836, he made a brief incursion in the study of Law and lectured French. He fought for the approximation of a closed and provincial Portugal towards an airy and cosmopolitan Europe. He was part of the intellectual elite that participated in the Casino Conferences, called to debate the winds of change which blew in from abroad.
With Eça de Queirós, he wrote the novel «The Mystery of the Sintra Road» and launched «As Farpas» [The Barbs], a series of implacable chronicles on Portuguese society of the period. From 1872 onwards, he took on their writing alone. He died in Lisbon, in 1915.
Ruy Cinatti was a poet, anthropologist and agronomist. Fascinated by exotic destinations, he dedicated a substantial part of his writing – and life – to the land and people of East Timor. Born in London in 1915.
He studied Agronomy in Lisbon and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford. He wrote various monograph studies on East Timor, which he visited on successive occasions, and was a staunch defender of respect for the culture of the Maubere people. The beauty he observed on the islands of the Southern Seas inspired him to write «Conto do Ossobó» [Short Story of Ossobó] (1936), considered a «little masterpiece». At this time he awakened to poetry.
The Civil War in Spain and World War II led him to move towards forms of protest which gave rise to the launch of the first series of «Cadernos de Poesia» [Poetry Notebooks](1940). In the same decade he published the magazine «Aventura». Before his death, in 1986, he was given the satisfaction of feeling that his work was appreciated by the younger generations. Agostinho Ricca became distinguished in architecture due to the modernity and extreme rigour of his drawing. He collaborated in the first Urbanisation Plan of Porto and designed emblematic works of the city, where he was born in 1915. The Residential Park and Church of Our Lady of Boavista, the Nursing School in Braga and the City Hall in Santo Tirso are, among others, of his authorship. The Church of the Sacred Family of Chaves was his last project. He died in 2010, before seeing it inaugurated.
A protagonist of the modern generation of Portuguese architecture, he founded the Organisation of Portuguese Architects. He valued spatial purity and truth in the materials. Concrete, steel, brick, wood and glass appear, in most of his works, combined in such a way as to recall a «symphony».
Frederico George, painter, architect and teacher, he was highly reputed for his pedagogic skills and for having introduced, at António Arroio School and at the Higher Education School of Fine Arts of Lisbon (ESBAL), the bases of the new subject of Design, which laid the foundations of the first Higher Education Course of Design of the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. A reference in artistic education in Portugal, he lived between 1915 and 1994. He trained at ESBAL, the institution where he was a prestigious professor, and during the 1940s many artists regularly visited his atelier, a place of work and learning.
He awakened to architecture after having been a member of Cottinelli Telmo’s team at the Portuguese World Exhibition. He restructured the teaching of this subject in the country and was a driving force in the relaunch of the Architecture Department of ESBAL, in 1976.
The complex of the Império Square/ Marine Museum and Planetarium in Lisbon, the Pavilion of Portugal at the Osaka International Exhibition and the Solar da Madre de Deus in Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, are some of the works which bear his signature.
