Untitled

X MARKS THE SPOT, I
Very few artists have followed such a coherent and determined path in their choices as Fernando Calhau, whether in Portugal or internationally. Throughout his career his option for monochrome painting guided him from his time as a student in the late sixties and early seventies at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa.
His first pictorial production, to which these works belong, was carried out between 1972 and 1975, and was followed by a period of mourning over painting, in line with the wind of the time, during which Fernando Calhau did photographic works and Super 8 films, as well as some experiments in video (which today are unfortunately lost because the technical support he used is now obsolete and discontinued). The series of green paintings which Calhau made in three different sizes, coming from the landscape works he did when he was still a student, always follow the same structure and the same process of production: they are square canvases painted in compressor-projected acrylic and reveal a cross set in the centre. In some (few) cases the side edges of the paintings are marked by bars made – like the crosses – by modulations of green tones.
They are, therefore, very simple paintings, carried out with enormous technical mastery, and show Fernando Calhau’s passion for the minimal, wilfully erasing any trace of the hand in favour of a satin, uniform appearance.
Calhau’s interest in reduction in expression, his attention to the detail of the finish – often almost obsessively – is derived from the enormous care with which he looked at things.
There are people who have a well-trained ear, who hear things that we do not. Calhau had a trained and aware eye: he saw more than most of us, not out of acuity of sight, but through sophistication and attention. So for him the dryness and rigour of the work was enough, and he even abandoned the green of his work in the early seventies in favour of the black that occupied all his later work.
However, at the beginning of his career the vigour of this youthful, open green covered the surface of his canvas, opening up an era.
The cross would gradually fade away until the surface was just covered by one colour. Calhau had reached the bone of his painting.
All that would be left for him was to stop in order to start again, more sombre and radical.

Delfim Sardo