Telmo, José Ângelo Cottinelli

(1897-1948)

   Architect, artist, musician, photographer, illustrator, and filmmaker. Trained at the Escola de Belas-Artes, Lisbon, he produced the classic film A Canção de Lisboa (Song of Lisbon). Although best known for his extraordinary architectural creations, he was also a musician, dancer, and photographer, and it was Cottinelli Telmo who introduced the newspaper cartoon (banda desenhada) to Portugal. A visionary creator and organizer, he pioneered the notion of the "garden-city" in Lisbon. While he was employed by the Portuguese railroads, he designed train stations and other structures, including several in Lisbon, Campolide, and Caçém.

   His most memorable contribution was work at the massive 1940 Exposition of the Portuguese World at Belém, a kind of world's fair that opened in the weeks before the fall of France in June 1940. The centerpiece of this exposition, in what is now the Praça do Império and fronting on the Monastery of Jerônimos, was the Pavilion of the Portuguese in the World. Named chief architect by Minister of Public Works Duarte Pacheco, Cottinelli Telmo gathered around him a stellar array of the country's finest architects and artists of their generation. Other major projects were buildings in Belém, the Sanctuary at Fátima, the Catholic shrine, and Coimbra's University City.