[open the box] José Escada

José Escada’s paintings (or works, more correctly speaking, as this includes drawings and cut-outs) since the lexicon of forms he constructed after 1965 are mysterious and fascinating. They are an enormous collection of signs – some recognizable, others mysterious, some figurative, others abstract – that appear in visual constructions in which they are put together as in a puzzle. One is always reminded of Georges Perec and his explanation on the nature of the puzzles in Life A user’s manual, the hierarchy up to the most difficult and complex puzzle – the one that, due to its great regularity, seems to be able to be multiplied ad infinitum. The same happens with the webs of the constructions in Escada’s paintings that endlessly deal with the possibilities of articulation of his simple and enormous visual lexicon.

Alongside the paintings, Escada also began to make cut-outs in metal or paper using the same figures, now transformed into shapes that stand out over the inside or outside of the pictorial plane. Sometimes these figures are isolated, on a smaller scale, or “inside each other”, like labyrinths of shapes that are steeped within each other.

From 1960 on, when he left for Paris (although he had exhibited with João Vieira, Gonçalo Duarte and René Bertholo since 1955), José Escada was linked to the KWY group, one of the most interesting and bold artistic projects of the time, its members including Lourdes Castro, Christo, Costa Pinheiro and Jan Voss. It is in the context of this group that his cut-outs appear, and it is curious to note his connections with the development of visual lexicons by João Vieira and Lourdes Castro – in relation to whom the cut-outs appear to hold a close dialogue.

In many of these cut-outs there is a playful character, almost a charade to be solved: to find out how the horse that crushes the man was planned and folded, how the volume of the frog is turned into the two dimensional, then turned into three dimensions after the fold, seems to be the tasks posed for us by Escada.

Escada’s works are games. They are so simple and efficient that they may, unfairly, pass us by unnoticed.

Biography
José Escada (Lisbon, 1934-1980) attended the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio, and from 1950 the course in Painting at the Escola de Belas-Artes de Lisboa. His first exhibition was in 1953. In the mid- fifties he joined the Movimento de Renovação da Arte Religiosa (Movement for the Renovation of Religious Art), which intended to bring together modern art and spiritual and religious manifestations. He received a grant from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, going to Paris in 1960, where, along with René Bertholo, Gonçalo Duarte and João Vieira (with whom he had shared a studio in Lisbon) he joined the KWY group, which also included Lourdes Castro, Costa Pinheiro, Jan Voss and Christo. He exhibited his works at several different exhibitions in Portugal, such as the general Artes plásticas exhibitions of 1954, 1955 and 1956, the Salão dos artistas de hoje, in 1956, the 1. salão de arte moderna at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, in 1958, and 50 artistas independentes, in 1959. Abroad, of note are the shows at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (1965), and Arte portuguesa contemporânea, presented in 1976-1977 in Brasilia, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. He is represented in several private and institutional collections, among those being the Centro de Arte Moderna – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, the Colecção Berardo (Lisboa) and the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (Lisbon).

Bibliography
José Escada, 1934-1980 (cat.), Paris, Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian – Centre Culturel Portugais, 1991.
KWY, Paris 1958-1968 (cat.), Lisboa, Centro Cultural de Belém/Assírio & Alvim, 2001.