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DELICATE BODIES
Jorge Vieira belongs to our memory of some places in Lisbon. In Rua Braamcamp there was a statue by Jorge Vieira at the entrance to a chemist’s, a work that was from a universe similar to that of Henry Moore’s, though smoother and more delicate. These were bodies in an embrace, and hugged the street in the strangeness of their metamorphosis into one being. In Expo’98 the Homem-sol is a giant that guards those who shelter in the shade. These are marks of welcoming in the city, pieces of our affective map of the urban space, and among the best works of art in the urban space that Lisbon possesses.
Jorge Vieira’s artistic career is long, having started in 1949, when he was probably the first Portuguese abstract sculptor. Later on, in the fifties, his characters would lose their plinth, touch the ground and take on humanity. They have become delicate bodies, reticulated and almost human structures that mix, morph and go together. They define a life of their own, they inhabit their spaces and they go on to belong to a gallery of bodies that fill our imaginary of sculpture.

Delfim Sardo