Manuel Cargalheiro, a master ceramicist who lived to add color to painting.

The artist and ceramist Manuel Cargalheiro, who died this Sunday in Lisbon at the age of 97, left behind a body of work in Portugal and abroad, marked by inspiration from Portuguese tiles, complex compositions and a strong passion for the play of color and light. .

Master Manuel Cargalheiro, for whom color and light were “a delight,” stated several times that he felt like a ceramist, even when he painted in oils. I couldn’t imagine one without the other because the two artistic practices influenced each other.

“When I paint in oils, I think about ceramics, and when I make ceramics, I think about painting,” said the master, known for mastering the tile technique from an early age and whose collaboration was often sought by other artists who admired his skill. craftsmanship and originality.

Manuel Alves Cargaleiro was born in Chau das Cervas, Vila Velha de Rodão, on March 16, 1927 and spent his childhood in a pottery workshop in Monte da Caparica, in the municipality of Almada, where his parents moved when he was only two years old.

In this ceramics he began to experiment with glass and paints and acquired a taste for ceramics, but his creativity extended to other media such as painting and, in addition, tapestry.

Despite an early passion for art, he studied geographical and natural sciences for three years at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Lisbon, as, by his own admission, he was a great admirer of nature, and only later, in 1949, did he enter the École Superiore Fine Arts from Lisbon.

“I am a flower artist. I live for flowers, and that is the result of looking at nature a lot,” he said.

His first abstract paintings, entitled Microscopic Compositions, arose from the observation of plant tissues rendered through a microscope, drawing inspiration from the natural world around him.

In 1952 he held his first solo exhibition at the National Secretariat of Information in Lisbon, and two years later, while working as a ceramics teacher at the Escola Secundária Antonio Arroio in Lisbon, he had the opportunity to exhibit his works at the Galeria de Março, which operated in the Portuguese capital from 1952 to 1954.

That same year, he presented his first oil paintings at the First Salon of Abstract Art, won the National Ceramics Prize, and traveled to Paris for the first time, where he met the artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, with whom he became friends and with whom he would work intensively some three decades later in the process of installing the artist’s tile panels in the Cidade Universitária and Rato stations of the Lisbon metro, while he designed his own panels for the Colégio Militar station.

His work was inspired by traditional Portuguese tiles, and was also initially influenced by the painter and ceramist Lino António, a modernist who designed the stained glass windows in the Aula Magna of the University of Lisbon and the frescoes in the atrium of the National Library of Portugal. The rationalism and sobriety of French art, from which Cargaleiro later departed through the use and intense exploration of color, also became his starting point.

This extensive study of color, with “great pleasure” as he always said, led some art historians to call him a “happy artist”. Until he was 95, he continued to work in the studio almost daily: “I spend hours on it and forget I’m working,” he said.

In 1955, Manuel Cargaleiro was awarded an honorary diploma from the International Academy of Ceramics at the Cannes International Ceramics Festival in France.

He was invited to design tile panels for the municipal garden of Almada and the façade of the Moscavide church, and by the end of that decade he had received two fellowships in ceramics respectively in Faenza, Italy. and in Gien, France.

In the meantime, he settled permanently in the French capital, where he founded his studio, expanding his international presence. Until the end of the 1970s, he held solo exhibitions in Lisbon, Paris, Tokyo, Milan, Lausanne, Porto and various cities in Brazil. He was also invited to group exhibitions in Almada, Geneva, Osaka, Seoul.

He collaborated with poets, namely Armand Guibert and Victor Ferreira, whose poems were illustrated by the artist.

The French Ministry of Culture invited him to design ceramic panels for three schools in his host country. So he did.

In the 1980s, he began studying tapestries after being invited by the Portuguese government to design one of these works for the new International Labor Organization building in Geneva.

From the 1990s onwards, his work would be dominated by agglomerated and chromatically rich patterns, continuing to reference the Portuguese tiles that had so defined his work.

In Castelo Branco, the Manuel Cargalheiro Foundation was created in 1990 with the aim of creating a museum dedicated to his work. This happened in 2005, first in the historical building Solar dos Cavaleiros, which was later expanded into a “modern building”.

About ten years later, the Manuel Cargalheiro Art Workshop was opened in Seixal, based on the architectural design of Álvaro Siza, with the aim of promoting contemporary art, the works of the master Manuel Cargalheiro and the collections of his foundation, be it temporary, but above all through the dissemination of art and work with young artists, giving content to the definition implied in the name “Workshop”.

Receiving first prize at the international competition “Viaggio attraverso la Ceramica” and Manuel Cargalheiro’s connection with the city of Vietri sul Mare in Italy arise in the context of deepening ties with the Italian artistic world.

In 2004, these connections led to the creation of the Fondazione Museo Artistico Industriale Manuel Cargaleiro, a ceramics production and research center, to which the artist donated 150 works.

In 2017, exactly on his 90th birthday, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, awarded Manuel Cargaleiro the Grand Cross of the Order of Infante Dom Henrique, calling him a “complete artist”. In February 2023, he received the Grand Cross of the Order of Camões.

The City Council of Castelo Branco awarded him the city’s gold medal in 2022, and that same year the artist also received a doctorate “honoris causa” from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), located in Covilhã, a city that is part of the region where he was born, an award to which he attached “unique” significance at the time.

That same year, the Lisbon City Council awarded him the city’s Medal of Honor.

That same year, the artist donated around 1,900 pieces of ceramic art worth 1.2 million euros to his foundation, based in Castelo Branco, which houses the artist’s vast collection amassed over 70 years, including works by you and other artists.

In 2019, in Paris, the ceramicist received the Medal of Merit in the Field of Culture from the Portuguese government and the Grand Vermeil Medal, the highest award in the French capital.

At the same time, the extension of the Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau metro station was also inaugurated with new works by Manuel Cargaleiro, originally designed and entirely decorated by the Portuguese artist in 1995, including the tiled panel “Paris-Lisbonne”.

Last year there were exhibitions “Eu Sou… Cargaleiro” at the Ancede Monastery – Bayan Cultural Center, in the Porto area, an exhibition of paintings at the Teixeira Lopez House Museum – Galerias Diogo de Macedo, in Vila Nova de Gaia. entitled “Cargaleiro, Pintar a Luz Viver a Cor” and an exhibition of prints at the Ermesinde Cultural Forum in Valongo entitled “The Essence of Color”. This year he took works that had never been exhibited to his studio in Seixal.

Wils (Alexandre Farto) also collaborated to create the work “Mensagem”, destined for an exhibition at the Cargaleiro Museum in Castelo Branco.

Last April, he gave his home town of Vila Velha de Rodau a painting to mark the 50th anniversary of April 25, which he called “Festival of Gratitude.”

Gratitude is also the word his wife uses to describe the master’s life and recognition in Portugal. In conversation with Lusa, Isabelle Brito da Mana today recalled the Cargalheiro Museum in Castelo Branco and the Seixal Art Workshop, highlighting how the life and art of Manuel Cargalheiro came together and came to fruition. The life of one of the most cosmopolitan creators of Portuguese art, recognized throughout the world and present in major international collections, who never forgot his connection with his homeland, with the Castelo Branco region and with the southern bank of the Tagus. where he grew up.

In an interview with Lusa last September, the master said that he understands that there are “two currents in the world: one positive, the other negative.”

“There are artists who think that there is nothing to do and describe destructive things, for example [pintor anglo-irlandês Francis] Bacon. It has a sad, cruel, aggressive picture. And [o pintor e ceramista francês de origem bielorrussa Marc] Chagall, who has a picture of hope, beauty and a message. I place myself on that side. I like to create something that gives strength, inspires and gives hope.”

And in conclusion he said: “I take my brushes and start painting, and I don’t know what will happen. There are so many things I would like to do.”