In tribute to the life and work of Manuel Cargaleiro, who died on 20 June 2024, Collection Caixa Geral de Depósitos is highlighting Gesto no tempo – Beira Baixa (1981-83), a work that has been part of the Collection since 1983.

Born in the small village of Chão das Servas, Vila Velha de Rodão, the family moved to Monte da Caparica, Almada, when he was two years of age. In 1945 he began his first experiments with clay at José Trindade's pottery studio. The following year he enrolled the Geographic and Natural Sciences course at Faculdade de Ciências, University of Lisbon, also attending the open classes at Academia de Belas-Artes. He then devoted himself entirely to visual arts and worked as a ceramicist at Fábrica Sant'Anna, Lisbon. He has participated in several individual and group exhibitions since 1949. In 1954 he started teaching ceramics at Escola Artística António Arroio, Lisbon. In 1957 he moved to Paris; by this time he had already created tile panels for many architectural sites, such as, Cidade Universitária, Lisbon, Jardim Municipal, Almada, and Igreja de Santo António, Moscavide. Throughout his career he was also known for ceramic projects, such as the facade of the 1983 building of the Instituto Franco-Português in Lisbon, the Metropolitano de Lisboa Colégio Militar-Luz Station (1988) and the Champs Elysées-Clémenceau Metro Station, Paris (1995), among others.

His work also included painting, drawing and engraving, but he was always a ceramist first: “I started my artistic life as a ceramist and I am a ceramist even when I am using an oil painting medium. I can't imagine one without the other as they influence each other. I cannot ignore my understanding of the history of faïence or mural decoration when I paint, just as I cannot forget my pictorial culture when creating a ceramic piece. Everything is connected, and that is precisely what I specialise in.” (Manuel Cargaleiro). His taste for natural plant structures will not run far from his pictorial practice, nor will his knowledge of the technique of model composition and his penchant for ‘blue’ and ‘white’, the colours of traditional Portuguese tiles. His paintings, namely Gesto no tempo - Beira Baixa, which is also included in this show, reveal a very detailed and precise structural design that is transformed into spatial and architectural spaces. Strongly inspired by the work of his close friend, the painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Cargaleiro's paintings evoked a persistence of Parisian abstractionism from the 1940s.

In 2011, the Council of Castelo Branco joined efforts with Fundação Castelo Branco to build the new Museu Cargaleiro, a space dedicated to house and to show his work and collection. Throughout his life the artist received many honours for his role in culture: Military Order of Sant'Iago da Espada, Portugal, 1983; Officier des Arts et des Lettres, France, 1984; Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, Portugal, 1989; Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Henrique, Portugal, 2017 and Grand Cross of Order of Camões, Portugal, 2023.

Hugo Dinis