Júlio Pomar: Bold Portuguese Artist "Cast Off Moorings"
- @ Cynthia Adina Kirkwood
- 4 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Study in Red (1964), by Júlio Pomar: "The body of work dedicated to the theme of 'races' and 'entrances' -- namely through the representation of horses, jockey races, bull runs and cowboys -- is for Pomar a reason for intense exploration of movement in painting. Júlio Pomar is in motion and imprints movement on his tools. He moves while painting and moves spirits while writing. He seeks movement and this, as if already escaping his control, gaining autonomy, advances from his canvases towards the spectator's space," according to
the Júlio Pomar Atelier-Museum.
In constant movement and creation, Júlio Pomar was one of the most renowned Portuguese artists of the 20th century. He addressed a long list of varied subjects, such as animals, bullfighting and eroticism, fado, literature and political protest.
Not only are his themes varied and many, so are his art styles and forms, according to 10 works of art tell the story of the artist Júlio Pomar, P55.Art:
"Belonging to the third generation of modernists, Júlio Pomar is an artist with works ranging from neorealism to expressionism, including abstractionism. He mainly produced paintings and drawings, but also carried out engraving, sculpture, illustration, ceramics, glass, tapestry, collages, theater scenography and mural decoration in tiles. In the last years of his life, he also dedicated himself to poetry and music".
When Júlio Pomar, himself, was asked, by UPORTO, Magazine of Former Students of the University of Porto (June 2004), whether risk and uncertainty were necessary for creativity, he answered:
"Yes. Risk, uncertainty, indeterminacy are minimum conditions for existence as an inventor of ideas, of plastic ideas, of forms. . . . That and extreme solitude (which can be experienced without having negative or anti-social characteristics.) And also the difference, which I prefer to call oddness. Oddness is at the root of invention in art. And it is oddness which is never present, for example, in industry, or in other forms of production, even in those which try to present themselves or promote themselves as 'inventive' or 'creative'."
The work of Júlio Pomar (January 10, 1926 - May 22, 2018) cannot be categorized or boxed in. In 2004, the artist established a foundation with his name. In 2013, the Júlio Pomar Atelier-Museum was inaugurated by the Lisbon City Council at number 7, Rua do Vale, after an architectural renovation by Álvaro Siza Viera (1992 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner).
Celebration of the centenary of the birth of the artist is underway at the eponymous museum.
Pomar was born and died in Lisbon at the age of 92. However, he settled in Paris in 1963 and received a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for 1964 to 1966. He worked and lived between Paris and Lisbon until his death, according to the Julio Pomar Atelier-Museum.
Michel Waldberg, who wrote essays on art, said, according to the Centro Nacional de Cultura:
"I know of no work more paradoxical, more contradictory in appearance, than that of Júlio Pomar. . . . I saw him incessantly change style (if this word still has any meaning), renew themes and techniques, disappoint expectations, . . . refuse any barrier, any closure, go further, cast off moorings, risk everything, make conceptual U-turns, start again from scratch, put life at stake in painting and painting at stake in life, and tirelessly confronting, so to speak, with his hands alone, the 'restless whiteness' of canvas or paper."
Mural for the Cinema Batalha, Porto (1946-47), by Júlio Pomar: The works from this period fall within the so-called neorealist movement. The artist was arrested by the PIDE (Portuguese secret police) before he finished the mural. The fresco was covered with paint in June 1948, a year after the building's inauguration, according to 10 works of art tell the story of the artist Júlio Pomar, P55.Art. There has been talk of it being restored, Júlio Pomar told UPORTO. The few photographs which exist today of this painting, done directly on the building's wall, offer a glimpse into the artist's audacity," according to 10 works of art. He was only 19 when he received the commission.
Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar was born 100 years ago in Lisbon.
"In the early days, the family lived on Rua das Janelas Verdes, on the fourth floor, which offered me a panoramic view of the river, the sea, as we used to say. It was my maternal grandparents' house," the artist said in an interview re-published on his death in Expresso (May 22, 2018), which was first published on March 4, 2017.
"My grandparents were very important in my childhood. My grandfather used to take me for walks along the docks. . . . He had been a sailor and had a lot of patience for making cardboard boats."
From their house, "the view of that sea had been absolutely fundamental in making me a painter. I think if it weren't for that view, I would never would have painted."
He was the third child and the only boy. His father, an employee of the Post and Telegraph Office, now CTT, had been a telegraph installer all over the country, but he had died of tuberculosis, "as was very common", when his son was a month old. In her youth, his mother had learned French and piano. "The piano didn't serve her much, but French did.
"It was the time of the Jewish exodus through Portugal. Mr. Hitler had started his work, and a Polish Jew who settled in Lisbon with an office on Rua de São Nicolau took my mother as his secretary. That was a great opportunity for her."
Since he was a child, Júlio Pomar painted, from the moment that Uncle Bernardino gave him a box of watercolors, according to the University of Porto Famous Alumni: Júlio Pomar (2008).
Bernardino Simões was a merchant, who was married to his mother's sister, the artist said in the Expresso interview. Eventually, Júlio's family moved in with them in "the so-called Avenidas Novas", which was the designation of Lisbon's expansion north by the end of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, when several avenues were connected to the historical center of the city. "What I suffered afterwards in the house on Avenida João Crisóstomo, where there was no Tagus. I looked out the window, but there was nothing to be done."
However, Uncle Bernardino continued to play a "fundamental" role in Júlio's artistic development.
"Among the people who went to have coffee with him was a sculptor, Costa Mota Sobrinho, who was a teacher at António Arroio (Applied Art School of Lisbon), to whom my uncle supposedly said that he had a boy at home who was always making dolls, with their bottoms in the air, in the middle of the floor. And the sculptor supposedly replied that he should send me to the school. And that's how I, very young, ended up at António Arroio, which was mostly attended by girls taking a course in needlework." (He was eight, according to the University of Porto Famous Alumni).
Uncle Bernardino,"frequented gatherings at (cafés) Nicola and Chave d'Ouro, alongside a group of people against the regime, which led him, after many aborted attempts at revolution, to end up in Timor".
Júlio was taught by Uncle Bernardino's friend, "who taught at night, and I started drawing plaster figures. In short, I had a traditional academic preparation.
"It suited me in a way, but it also could have ended my conviction about drawing. Fortunately, I was always one to not give up at the first hurdle. I continued until I completed the Fine Arts qualification course to pursue a normal career. Except that the School of Fine Arts, at the time, was run by a gentleman, an architect by profession, who was so brutal and stupid that everyone added the adjective "brute" to his name. He became Cunha Bruto. . . . Well, he had a hatred for anyone who came from António Arroio because he said that the School of Fine Arts demanded a preparation and intellectual capacity which that school didn't provide."
Due to this antagonism, in 1944, he transferred from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, where he studied from 1942 to 1944, to the School of Fine Arts in Porto, according to the University of Porto Famous Alumni.
Mexican Muralists Siqueiros, Orozco and Rivera
While still at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, he told UPORTO, Magazine of Former Students of the University of Porto (June 2004), that he was introduced to international artist developments outside of Portugal, not at the school, but next door to it:
"It was quite curious that, next to the Fine Arts School in Lisbon, the library of the (National) Academy of Fine Arts, which, in that wartime, received all the propaganda, which for us was the most up-to-date information on art, on painting. It was American propaganda, surely mixed with Deutsche Kunst (German Art) and things of that kind, which made me see . . . a quantity of striking and influential things -- and some were the ones I wanted to see. . . .
"We saw the early (Jackson) Pollocks, or the works of one of his early models, Thomas Hart Benton, or the Mexican painting which interested us very much, (David Alfaro) Siqueiros, (José Clemente) Orozco, (Diego) Rivera . . .
"Incidentally, it is worth remembering that American war propaganda insisted on an American identity which integrated these men from Mexico as crucial representatives of that very identity, and it should not be forgotten that the second major monographic exhibition of the . . . Museum of Modern Art in New York. . . was precisely that of Rivera."
First Show at 16
In the meantime, when the artist was only 16, in 1942, he held his first exhibition in a rented room on Rua das Flores. Almada Negreiros (Trinidade, São Tomé and Príncipe 1893 -- Lisbon 1970) a defining figure of the first generation of Portuguese modernism, bought Os Saltimbancos (The Traveling Musicians), according to Expresso (May 22, 2018). Almada Negreiros invited the young artist to participate in the 7th Modern Art Exhibition of the National Secretariat of Propaganda/National Secretariat of Information, according to the University of Porto Famous Alumni.
"My arrival in Porto was triumphant," he told Expresso. "Almada already had bought that painting from me, and he already had taken it to the Modern Art exhibition of the National Propaganda Secretariat. And, of course, this was a big deal in Porto. Besides, the school had a different feel.
"I passed the courses I had to take with one hand tied behind my back. My school period, however, didn't last very long. At school, I took a very active stance. . . . And I was out on the street for four months, which meant failing the year, a year I already more of less failed due to absences."
In Porto, he wrote for newspapers and literary periodicals, according to the University of Porto Famous Alumni.
In opposition to the fascist regime, he also joined the Movimento de Unidade Democrática (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity) (MUD Juvenil) and participated in the student struggles. His political activity influenced his painting -- in works such as O Gadanheiro (Man With a Scythe), shown in 1945 at the National Society of Fine Arts, and in the texts he published in newspapers, in which he defended neorealist aesthetics".
In 1947, he organized his first solo drawing exhibition in Porto.
O Gadanheiro (Man With a Scythe), by Júlio Pomar, was created in the heat of the Alentejo summer, the artist told the Observador.
O Almoço do Trolha (The Bricklayer's Lunch) (1946-1950), by Júlio Pomar
Soon after Júlio Pomar left Porto about 1947, his painting Resistência was confiscated by the authorities. And his work on the fresco at Cinema Batalha, whose business manager was a university professor dismissed by the regime, -- "and there were quite a few professors who suffered the same fate" -- was nearly finished when he was taken to Caixas prison, according to UPORTO, Magazine of Former Students of the University of Port.
The Arrest and Prison
Why were you arrested, asked Expresso.
"Several of my paintings were seized, but I wasn't arrested because of them.
"I also was dismissed from my teaching position, which I held at the time and from which I lived, for having painted the portrait of General Norton de Matos", which was used in the general's campaign for the 1949 presidential election.
A former republican and Freemason, General Norton de Matos had held government positions and had gathered the entire opposition around him. He campaigned for freedom of expression as well as for a fair and transparent vote count, according to SAPO (July 29, 2016). The authoritarian António de Oliveira Salazar regime could not meet these demands.
The Constitution gave the president the power to dismiss the prime minister, as it still does today. Unsurprisingly, Norton de Matos ended up withdrawing before the election.
The artist told Expresso:
"They published the drawing in the newspaper, which gave me incredible popularity among my students. 'Mr. Engineer, was it you who drew the caricature of the general?' Mr. Engineer, draw my caricature!' Ten days later, bam, I'm out on the street. And that's how my teaching career ended."
Pomar said this laughing. Was it without any worries that you left the school?
"Not at the time. How could it have been? I was already married. I already had children. It was complicated."
So, then, why were you arrested?
"I was arrested because they thought I had links to the Communist Party. They couldn't prove it."
The Story of the Sacking of One University Professor
But did the Cinema Batalha mural, which had been covered over with paint at the order of the regime, make any accusations against the regime, asked Expresso.
"It wasn't anything. It was the São João festival in Porto. The reasons were: first, because I had done it, and vaguely, because there was no affinity between what I painted and what was called representation of the people at the time. The women with their caps, their bare feet, were a blatant image of Porto for anyone from Lisbon. It was almost like going to another country. The level of poverty seen in the streets, the tasks which women performed that were almost slavery. The one who painted this and, before me, was Abel Salazar; no one else recorded it."
Abel Salazar (1889 - 1946) had gained world fame for his research and writings at the University of Porto's Institute of Histology and Embryology, which he had founded in 1919. In 1935, he had been removed from the University of Porto, Faculty of Medicine. He was dismissed "from his professorship and laboratory, being forbidden from frequenting the library and from leaving the country". The reason given was "the deleterious influence of his pedagogical action on university youth", according to Distinguished Alumni of the University of Porto.
The doctor then focused his concerns on social, philosophical, political, aesthetic and literary issues, as well as artistic production. In 1941, during a period of relative freedom from dictatorship, he directed the Center for Microscopic Studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Porto. From 1942, he also worked with the Portuguese Institute of Oncology.
The Mário Soares official portrait was commissioned from Júlio Pomar in 1992. "It is the most unusual work in the Portrait Gallery. It breaks with the ceremonious and traditional figuration. In the artist's words, the image which remains is of "a great conversationalist". While the portrait abandons the usual style of pomp and circumstance, it still depicts the President with his formal tie, seated in the Chair of Lions, an icon associated with the Presidential office which had not reappeared since Bernardino Machado" (President of the Republic from 1915 to 1917 and from 1925 to 1926), according to the Museu da Presidência da República).
After Júlio Pomar's arrest in April 1947, he was sent to Caixas prison and released in August, according to Museu do Aljube: Resistência e Liberdade. At Caixas, he met Mário Soares, who later would serve as the first secretary-general of the Socialist Party (PS) (1973-1986), prime minister (1976-1978: 1983-1985) and president (1986-1996).
The artist did a line drawing of Mário Soares, according to Expresso, but Soares later would commission a portrait for the Presidential Gallery. While at Caixas, Júlio made a series of drawings about daily prison life, reported Museu do Aljube. Tried in court in 1949, he was sentenced to 30 days of correctional imprisonment and loss of political rights.
He told Expresso:
"They wanted to find dependencies and links between the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement for Democratic Unity) and the Communist Party. And we had written a manifesto about the prisons. It is on the basis of this document that we were convicted. We were tried later and convicted of spreading false and biased news. Mário (Soares) was arrested before me. (Francisco Salgado) Zenha, (an anti-fascist lawyer from the politically active University of Coimbra, who later would help found the Socialist Party and gain political office,) too. In fact, Zenha stayed even longer.
"I was arrested at a time when the prisons were overcrowded because there had been major strikes and an attempted coup. Everyone was there. The rooms or cells had bunk beds stacked on top of each other. We did everything. I even gave an introductory art course."
"The most important theorist of neorealism", according to RTP Ensina (2017), is how art critic Mário Dionísio described Júlio Pomar. His work was "art in the form of social protest" in the early years of his work, reported Expresso.
"Yes, and that was me. That was the driving force behind my work. We can't reduce it to anything that characterizes us now. Each person is a world of things and complexities. To try to reduce them to one thing is to impoverish them.
"I (abandoned neorealism) instinctively and without it being a decision . . . The hand may be calling one way and the head another. They may be in contradiction, but the change happens naturally. Contradiction is indeed the starting engine of our thinking."
Influences: Velázquez, Goya and Picasso
In 1950, at an exhibition of the National Society of Fine Arts, Pomar exhibited important paintings, such as O Almoço do Trolha (The Bricklayer's Lunch), denoting neorealist influences but stripped of political meaning, according to University of Porto Famous Alumni.
Expresso noted that "when we look at (Pomar's) work, we don't see Velázquez, nor Goyas, nor Picassos. We see Júlio Pomar".
Pomar responded: "There are painters who are afraid of being influenced, not me. I never felt that, I think that I am actually a bit of a cannibal."
Also, in 1950, the artist traveled to Spain, where he studied the work of Goya, who later influenced his paintings Maria da Fonte and Cegos de Madrid (The Blind of Madrid), dated 1957.
In 1952, Pomar produced portraits of intellectuals, such as Mário Dionísio and Maria Lamas.
Martelo e três frutos (Hammer and three fruits) (1991-2002), by Júlian Pomar: "Among modern Portuguese painters, Júlio Pomar is one of the few -- like Paula Rego -- whose figuration, not only human, is the main theme. Many animals were portrayed by Júlio Pomar," according to Animal paintings by the Portuguese artist Júlian Pomar, P55.Art.
Why did you go to live in Paris in 1963, asked Expresso.
"Paris was, at the time, the dream of young artists and all aspiring artists. Paris was the center of the world, or rather, it had just become so, but we always see things from a backward perspective. We tend to see what already has passed more easily than what is happening now. Paris was indeed losing much of its centrality in the arts at the time."
"But did you find what you were looking for there?"
"Oh yes. To the point of staying there until three years ago (in 2014). And I only returned to having a home in Portugal after April 25th", (the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the overthrow of the nearly 50 years of the Estado Novo dictatorship).
Júlio Pomar honors four names from Portuguese literature -- Luís Vaz de Camões (1989), neoclassical poet Manuel Bocage, Fernando Pessoa and Almada Negreiros -- at a Lisbon Metro train station on the Linha Azul (Blue Line). João Castel-Branco Pereira said: "Pomar embodies a warrior and gallant Camões, a memoirist of a poetically fictionalized national history, in medieval duels, exoticisms of the Orient and fiery loves on mythical islands," according to Metro.
Do you still spend time with your peers, Expresso asked the 91-year-old artist.
"Yes. But great friendships are fading away. Time takes them away."
You lived through World War II, the dictatorship, the 25th of April revolution, the Cold War, Portugal's entry into the European Union. How do you view it all today?
"I would say that nothing is certain. We are truly being shaken and awakening from our illusions. Nothing is certain."
Júlio Pomar (Photo from the University of Porto Famous Alumni)
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