Ceramicist and artist Manuel Cargaleiro died this Sunday at the age of 97. The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, left a message of condolences on his website.
“The President of the Republic will never forget his last meeting with Mestre Cargaleiro, which took place a few weeks ago in his home in Lisbon, during which he continued to dream of projects for the future and to believe in Life, always giving prestige to Portugal,” could be read in the note left by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
The President of the Republic recalled the works left by the artist, stressing that “Manuel Cargaleiro never allowed cosmopolitanism to mean eradication.”
Manuel Cargalheiro, born Vila Velha de Rodan, in the district of Castelo Branco, has lived in Paris, France since 1957. In 2017, the artist was twice awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Enrique by the President of the Republic and in 2023 – the Grand Cross of the Order of Camões.
Manuel Cargaleiro “died peacefully, surrounded by his family, he fell asleep,” his companion said.
His work was inspired by traditional Portuguese tiles. In 1949, he entered the Higher School of Fine Arts of Lisbon and took part in the First Annual Ceramics Exhibition at the Palacio Foz in Lisbon, where he held his first solo ceramics exhibition in 1952.
Early in his career, back in the 1950s, he received the Sebastian de Almeida National Ceramics Prize and an honorary diploma from the International Academy of Ceramics at the Cannes International Ceramics Festival in France, at the time he began working. as professor of ceramics at the School of Decorative Arts António Arroio and presented his first oil paintings at the First Salon of Abstract Art.
In the 1960s and 1970s he participated in individual and group exhibitions and during this period established himself not only as a renowned ceramicist but also as a designer and artist. In the 1980s he began to explore tapestry.
From the 1990s onwards, his works would be dominated by agglomerated and chromatically rich patterns, which would still be reminiscent of Portuguese tiles.
In 1990, the Manuel Cargaleiro Foundation was opened in Castelo Branco, later expanded to include a dedicated museum and, later, the Manuel Cargaleiro Art Studio in Seixal, Setúbal.
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.
In 2019, in Paris, the ceramist received the Medal of Merit for Culture from the Portuguese government and the Grand Vermeil Medal, the highest award in the French capital, where he lived most of his life.
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”.