The Places Of Júlio Resende

Júlio Resende (1917 - 2011), born in Porto, authored a vast body of painting work developed between the 1930s and 2000s. He completed his training in painting in 1945 at the School of Fine Arts of Porto, where he taught from 1958 to 1987.

Resende's stay in Paris, where he settled in the winter of 1947, was of enormous importance in his artistic career, as it was for all the new artists who had been granted scholarships to study abroad. It was an opportunity to be exposed to an artistic universe and a range of references that were virtually non-existent in Portugal.

In 1949/50, he taught at a small ceramics school in Viana do Alentejo, during which time he met the writer Vergílio Ferreira and artists Júlio and Charrua. The drawings from the Alentejo period unveil what we can consider the seminal cycle of his career after his return from Paris.

 A period of contemplation and intense production that it would definitively mark the artist's research in response to the human and cultural involvement that surrounded him, as the statements that accompany his drawings allow us to sense.

After 1951, I would frequently visit the Alentejo. Some drawings and watercolours showed an evolution from a rectilinear to a curvilinear state. Recent experience of the coastline and its expansive people, as restless as the waves, have revived my expressionist temperament. (Júlio Resende)

In 1954, Júlio Resende taught at the Póvoa de Varzim Secondary School. In 1955, he promoted the second International Art Mission in this town. 

My destiny as a "supply" teacher took me to Póvoa de Varzim, and there I would mix up with the people of the sea. The salty mist, the rough winter sea and its short days, justify the mystery contained in the black silhouettes of its women, working tools and a world of unrevealed things. (Júlio Resende)

In the 1950s, Júlio Resende perceived the cultural vocation of this town and invested in Póvoa de Varzim to hold the second International Art Mission, to which foreign artists were invited to dialogue with Portuguese artists.

In 1971, Resende visited Brazil for the first time, embarking on a series of journeys that would only end in 2000. As a compulsive observer and artist depicting scenes of everyday life, these trips were marked by an intense production of drawings, which served as the basis for a new concept of space in his painting. Resende said that he owed to Brazil, especially northeastern Brazil, a new concept of pictorial space in his work, a space free of physical weight.

Watercolour was Resende's favourite technique in his various travels, mainly and during the 1940s/50s, becoming important again in the 1980s, when the artist was a constant admirer of the black forest, as well as the Brazilian Northeast.

In the 1990s, the articulation with Portuguese-speaking countries or countries with Portuguese influence was re-established, with the Júlio Resende Foundation promoting several artist-in-residence programmes in Mozambique, Cape Verde and Goa, which resulted in exhibitions in these countries and the publication of the respective catalogues.

In Goa's most recent works, we can see a pronounced preference for what has always been a constant, a work stemming from urgent existential reasons. (Júlio Resende)

The creation of the Lugar do Desenho - Fundação Júlio Resende was one of the main projects he dedicated himself to from the final decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Designed by the architect José Carlos Loureiro, it opened in 1997 on the banks of the Douro in Gondomar.

Resende's work is currently exhibited in several national museums, including the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto, the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum in Amarante (partner of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Network - North) and international museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo in Brazil, the Helsinki Museum in Finland and the Maritime Museum of Macau.