Júlio Pomar
L'Angle ou la rigueur, 1978
Acrylic and textiles collage on canvas
81 x 130 cm
Inventory 219113
© Rodrigo Peixoto
Júlio Pomar has been a constant presence in Portuguese painting over the last sixty years, working on approaches and types of painting that correspond to the different moments in history, ranging from the neo-realism of the forties to the chromatic sensuality of painting in the eighties, to his periods of intense work on drawing.
His works also thematically cover the spectrum of his literary passions, the scenarios that fascinate him and the animals that populate his iconographic gallery.
There are two paths that establish the genealogy of painting for the 20th century: one based on the construction of the image from drawing, coming from Ingres, and another that is worked on starting from the mass of colour and the thickness of the stain, coming from Renoir.
Pomar followed a path in the development of his painting, which led him progressively to fit into that lineage of Ingres and Matisse, the construction of the image from the drawing, the chromatic surface that stands out.
In the two works belonging to the Colecção da Caixa Geral de Depósitos, both from the seventies, there is great clarity in this option, as if the lusciousness of the colour had given way to the inevitability of drawing for the construction of an erotic. This is the case; that of drawing bodies that are sewn, glued, cut out against a background that is the plane of the event.
This option probably derives from the great virtuosity of his drawing, which is narrative at each moment of the sketch, but also from his passion for the Matissean composition, for the superimposing of planes and the intensity of each chromatic field.
Biography
Júlio Pomar was born in Lisbon in 1926. After attendind the Escola Industrial António Arroio (Applied Art), he entered the Escola de Belas-Artes de Lisboa in 1942, then transferred to the equivalent school in Oporto in 1944. He settled in Paris in 1963, then lived between Paris and Lisbon. He exhibited for the first time in 1945, at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (Lisbon), from then on showing his works at several Portuguese and foreign institutions, with a special note being his participation at the São Paulo Biennial (1953, 1975 and 1985) and the exhibitions at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 1990), the Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna – Colecção Berardo (Sintra, 2004), the Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon, 2004) and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves (Oporto, 2008).
Bibliography
Júlio Pomar, catálogo raisonné I, pinturas, ferros e assemblages, 1942-1968 (cat.), Paris, La Différence, 2004.
Pomar, autobiografia (cat.), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim/Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna – Colecção Berardo, 2004.
Text
© Delfim Sardo, 2009
Biography / Bibliography
© Mariana Viterbo Brandão, 2009
Translation
© David Alan Prescott, 2009
Story production (Collection Caixa Geral de Depósitos)
Lúcia Marques (coordinator)
Hugo Dinis (production assistant)
