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

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

Master Manuel Cargaleiro, for whom color and light were “a pleasure,” stated several times that he felt like a ceramicist even when he painted in oil. I could not imagine one without the other, since these 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 Cargalheiro was born in Chau das Servas, Vila Velha de Rodau, 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, tapestries.

Despite his 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 he was, by his own admission, a great admirer of nature, and only later, in 1949, he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts of 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 observing plant tissues reproduced by 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 visited Paris for the first time, where he met the artist Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, with whom he became friends. and with which 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, when 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. Portugal. The rationalism and sobriety of French art, from which Cargaleiro later moved away through the use and intensive study of color, also became his starting point.

This extensive exploration of colour, with “great pleasure,” as he always said, led some art critics to call him “a happy artist.” Until the age of 95, he continued to work in the studio almost daily: “I spend hours on it and forget that I am 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 the artist illustrated.

The French Ministry of Culture invited him to design ceramic panels for three schools in the country that had adopted him, and so he did.

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

Beginning in the 1990s, his work would be dominated by agglomerated and chromatically intense patterns, which would continue 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 production and research centre in the field of ceramics, to which the artist donated 150 works.

In 2017, on the exact day of his 90th birthday, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, awarded Manuel Cargalheiro the Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante Dom Enrique, 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.

In the same year, the master donated some 1,900 works of ceramic art worth 1.2 million euros to his Castelo Branco-based foundation, which houses a huge collection amassed by the master over 70 years, including works by you and other artists.

In 2019, in Paris, the ceramist received the Medal for 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 the exhibitions “Eu Sou… Cargaleiro” at the Ancede Monastery – Baião Cultural Center, in the Porto area, a painting exhibition at the Teixeira Lopes House Museum – Galerias Diogo de Macedo, in Vila Nova de Gaia, entitled “Cargaleiro, Pintar a Luz Viver a Cor” and an engraving exhibition at the Ermesinde Cultural Forum in Valongo, entitled “Essence of Color”. This year, he has taken works that have never been exhibited before to his studio in Seixal.

Vils (Alexandre Farto) also joined forces to create the work “Mensagem”, intended for exhibition at the Cargalheiro Museum in Castelo Branco.

Last April, he donated a painting to his hometown of Vila Velha de Rodão 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 life of the master and his recognition in Portugal. In an interview with Lusa, Isabel Brito da Mana recalled today the Cargaleiro Museum in Castelo Branco and the Art Studio in Seixal, highlighting how the life and art of Manuel Cargaleiro 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 the main international collections, who never forgot his connection with his homeland, with the Castelo Branco area and 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 this side. I love creating something that is empowering, uplifting and gives hope.”

And he concluded: “I pick up my brushes and start painting, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. There are so many things I’d like to do.”