Art Deco pattern azulejo panel

Raul Lino (b. 1879 - d. 1974) went to a school near Windsor in England, at the age of eleven, and then continued on to Hannover in Germany. In Hannover he attended the Handwerker und Kunstgewerbeschule, had theoretical classes in the Technische/Hochschule and practical classes at the studio of Professor A. Haupt, where he became acquainted with the modern currents of renovation of the turn of the century. This education was responsible for his being an exception in Portugal’s cultural life at the time: instead of Paris and Art Nouveau, his interests were directed to the Modern Style with its German-Austrian and British roots. This line of study led him to take an interest not only in decoration as applied to construction but also in the decorative arts themselves, and he paid particular attention to the problems of function and form. To this day this pattern still employs a modern language, so that it is important to underline its author’s vision, for he created it at a time when Portuguese azulejo production was dominated by the Art Nouveau productions of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (b. 1846 - d. 1905) and the historicism of Jorge Colaço (b. 1868 - d. 1942).