Fernando Pessoa

Following the first campaign to decorate the underground stations in Lisbon, carried out between the late 1950s and the start of the 1970s, the extension of the network as from 1988 again relied on azulejos as the privileged material to clad and decorate the large wall surfaces at the stations. In this new phase, the Metropolitano invited renowned Portuguese artists to design the full revetment of the stations and not only restricted areas as had been the case with the projects commissioned from Maria Keil (b. 1914 - d. 2012) and Rogério Ribeiro (b. 1930 – d. 2008). The work that Júlio Pomar (b. 1926) designed for Alto dos Moinhos is part of this new concept which we might call a "signature station". The panels of the National Azulejo Museum, with important Portuguese writers such as Luís de Camões (b. ca. 1524 - d. 1580) and Fernando Pessoa (b. 1888 – d. 1935), are two of the representations that can be viewed at this station, together with other depictions of the same poets and also of other noted authors, such as Barbosa du Bocage (b. 1765 – d. 1805) and José de Almada Negreiros (b. 1893 – d. 1970), the latter also a drawer and painter. The design for Camões was conceived based on contemporary iconography, and the station also has various references to the world of the Lusiads. Fernando Pessoa’s design, on the other hand, used variations on the poet and his heteronyms, representing him shining his shoes, going downstairs or, as is the case of this panel, reading the paper. In this work Júlio Pomar intentionally plunged into Portuguese azulejo tradition, firstly by using blue on white – used exclusively between 1690 and 1750, but very marked in the national imagination – and in recovering the memory of the 18th century invitation figures. His representations, created on paper and transferred on the exact scale to the ceramic support, were designed in gestural fashion with a marker pen, allowing an expressivity that is close to graffiti, in what can be seen as a preview of its presence on the many white surfaces of this public space.