Negreiros, José Sobral de Almada

(1893-1970)

   Portuguese artist and writer. Born on the island of São Tomé, West Africa, a Portuguese colonial possession until 1975, Almada Ne-greiros began his artistic career as a humorist and cartoonist during the First Republic (1910-26). Linked with other writers, such as the celebrated Fernando Pessoa in the Orpheu review group, he became a leader of the avant garde artists-intellectuals who became cultural rebels through their art (especially painting and sculpture) and their writings. From the beginning, he became a leader in Portugal's modernist and futurist movements, and his sense of Portuguese identity and artistic taste was shaped in part by two important journeys to Madrid and Paris before 1930.

   Almada Negreiros was a versatile artist who expressed himself through a variety of creative works: drawings and paintings, novels, lectures, and pamphlets. In Portuguese art history, nevertheless, he became immortalized through his paintings of frescos and murals, such as the pictures found in A Brasileira, a legendary cafe in Lisbon's Chiado area; his paintings at the Exposition of the Portuguese World (1940); his murals at maritime stations at Alcântara (Lisbon) and Rocha do Conde De Óbidos, as well as in other public buildings; and a prominent panel in the atrium of the Gulbenkian Foundation headquarters, Lisbon, completed in 1969, the year before his death. In addition to other forms, he experimented with geometric abstractionism.

   Politically at odds with the Estado Novo toward the end of his life, Almada Negreiros remained ambivalent when his work was showered with official honors.