António Carneiro: O Voo da Águia at Museu do Porto – Ateliê António Carneiro
António Carneiro: O Voo da Águia, curated by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, opens the revamped Ateliê António Carneiro in Porto, planned by architect Camilo Rebelo, featuring works by one of Portugal’s most significant painters – a leading figure in the country’s Symbolism from the late nineteenth century. Split into four thematic clusters, the exhibition project is notable for the dialogue between the works of António Carneiro (Amarante, 1872 – Porto, 1930) and a series of sculptures by Miguel Branco (Castelo Branco, 1963). The exhibition stresses the connection between António Carneiro’s artistic approach and that of his time, but also with those of the present and of future eras, prompting research and exhibition proposals in the new cultural centre of Porto. The curator explains in the Exhibition Text: ‘the show attempts to identify future avenues for programming, which may serve to study over time António Carneiro’s relationship with his time, but also with the future of Portuguese art”.
António Carneiro was a painter and professor at Porto’s Academy of Fine Arts. He was also a key personality in the city’s cultural milieu, running the magazine Geração Nova and overseeing the literary and artistic department of the magazine A Águia. He also enjoyed writing poetry, as revealed in Solilóquios (1930), a posthumous publication by his sons (the painter Carlos Carneiro (Porto, 1900-1971) and the composer Cláudio Carneyro (Porto, 1895-1963)). A pupil of Marques de Oliveira and Soares dos Reis in the Fine Arts of Porto, he was also inspired by the new directions of Parisian painting at the end of the nineteenth century, after having spent time in Paris on a scholarship at the Académie Julian, taught by Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. His work stands out for its modernising touch to Portuguese painting, influencing the young Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (Amarante, 1887 – Espinho, 1918). Carneiro’s triptych A Vida: Esperança, Amor, Saudade (1899-1901) is regarded as the pioneer of Portuguese Symbolist painting, an artistic movement already taking hold in France, in favour of metaphor and poetry, changing from a representational to a figurative aesthetic, in a rupture with the prevailing Realism and Positivism.
In Fernando Guimarães’ text Simbolismos: Entre a Pintura e a Poesia, which is part of the exhibition project, the author, having asked what a symbol is, suggests: “In art, we could perhaps say that it involves a set of meanings in which a new implicit or virtual meaning is formed that integrates them, establishing an explicit context in the artwork that leads to what can be termed intertextuality – giving this word a comprehensive meaning with cultural ramifications”. He adds: ‘a symbol creates meaning or, more accurately, a sort of constellation of meanings, where the one (a word in a poem or a coloured shape in a painting) and the many (the aforementioned contextual or cultural broadening) coexist.
António Carneiro: O Voo da Águia, consisting of large thematic sections – A Paisagem (The Landscape), A Chave Simbolista (The Symbolist Key), A Família (The Family) and Diálogos (Dialogues) – unravels the artist’s work, offering a historical, biographical and aesthetic reading. Indeed, the exhibition title is the same as the biography Bernardo Pinto de Almeida published about the artist. It should be stressed that the exhibition project is held at Ateliê António Carneiro, under the jurisdiction of Museu do Porto – a building the painter commissioned in the 1920s, to combine work (for himself and his son Carlos Carneiro), exhibition and family living facilities on the same site.
In A Paisagem, there are paintings with this theme. Works that are not as widely known to the general audience, as they come from private collections. This section includes a series of Marinhas e Noturnos, differing in the way the landscape is treated during the day or at night. They stand out for the dissolving forms, a blend of sand and sea, horizon and moonlight, rippling, light and twilight. Expressionist touches, along the lines of Edvard Munch (Norway, 1863-1944) or the landscapes of Vilhelm Hammershoi (Denmark, 1864-1916). Interestingly, this group engages in a dialogue with Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s Sem Título (Montanhas) (1910), for its obliteration of forms, as well as Miguel Branco’s Sem Título (Paisagem com Submarino) (2024), astonishing for its unexpectedly small size, but singular figuration and setting, encouraging a narrative based on sci-fi.
Chave Simbolista then shows how Carneiro embraced Symbolism after his foray into France, by displaying the renowned triptych A Vida: Esperança, Amor, Saudade (1899-01). It sits next to works by his masters: the Parisian Eugène Carrière and Soares dos Reis at Escola do Porto, most notably Nossa Senhora da Vitória (Cabeça) (c.1875) and Cristo Morto (c.1873). Likewise, works by authors who inspired him are also presented, such as Puvis de Chavannes and Rodin, here represented by the sculpture L’Éternel Printemps (Eternal Spring) (1898). Throughout the exhibition, the well-known canvas Camões lendo os Lusíadas aos frades de São Domingos (1927) is mentioned alongside several studies. And there are two Ecce Homo, one from 1901 and the other from 1902, remarkable for their differences, but also for their brightness against the canvas background, their use of colour, their sharp but placid facial expression before a chained pose.
The section Família shows precisely the portraits Carneiro made of his family, which Bernardo Pinto de Almeida describes in the curatorial text as ‘some of the finest moments of the Portrait genre in Portuguese art’.
Finally, in Diálogos, we are introduced to the painter’s ties with some of the artists of his time. We should single out O Autorretrato (n.d.) of Sofia de Souza and Santo António Autorretrato (c.1902) of Aurélia de Souza – Carneiro’s fellow countrywomen -, exhibited next to the painter’s self-portraits. It should be noted, however, that this section is one of the cornerstones of the exhibition project, i.e., the relationship between António Carneiro’s work and that of authors of his time, but also the possible connections it may have with contemporary artistic practices. In this instance, Miguel Branco’s sculptures, exhibited in the Ateliê’s outdoor areas, are outstanding for the way in which the artist reveals a certain contrast between the real and the imagination, without neglecting figuration, thereby potentiating a highly symbolic effect.
In the north courtyard, the bronze sculptures Sem Título (A partir de Mathias Grunewald) #1 – #9 (2013-24), made up of several plinths, each containing a sort of cross-legged human skeleton, strike a chord with their morbid character. Incidentally, in the property’s south garden, Sem Título (Cavalo Negro) (2017) also elicits admiration for the bronze sculpture’s unique positioning in space, featuring a headless black horse, as if it were a set design from some sort of theatre play. On the south terrace, the series of black stoneware sculptures, each depicting a character, possibly of alien origin, such as Escriba, Testemunha or Anão, are in a resting position, instigating us to develop a narrative. In the quest for a constellation of meanings formed by the coexistence of the one and the many, as Fernando Guimarães said earlier about the symbol.
António Carneiro: O Voo da Águia is on show until December 29, 2024 at Museu do Porto – Ateliê António Carneiro.