José ESCADA (1934-1980)

José Escada was born in Lisbon in 1934, and died in the same city 46 years later. He initiated his artistic education at the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio, graduating in 1950. That same year he enrolled in the Special Painting Course at ESBAL where he met René Bertholo, Gonçalo Duarte, Costa Pinheiro, and Lourdes Castro. Alongside the latter, Escada shared an exhibition at the Centro Nacional de Cultura in 1954. The year before the artist had participated in his first exhibition at the VII Geral de Artes Plásticas, a contest he continued to participate in until 1956.

In 1956, the artist shared a studio over the Café Gelo with René Bertholo, Gonçalo Duarte and João Vieira. The relationship with these artists, dating back to their days at ESBAL, would last well into Escada’s time in Paris, when he joined the KWY group.

José Escada’s work constitutes itself around poetic values conferred through a purity of line and colour. His first drawings, mostly in China ink on Paper, already manifest some of the central concerns of his work by presenting images made from outlines and defined by agitated but sure lines where diverse elements are articulated and juxtaposed, thus originating organic forms that develop within the same scale.

Escada’s paintings from the early 60s still maintain some of the values expressed in the drawings, but he begins to explicitly draw away from figuration by abandoning the outlines and diluting the organic forms, making contrasts between colour and various luminous intensities stand out.

This period coincides with the artist’s move to Paris and into the KWY group alongside the Café Gelo artists, Lourdes Castro, Costa Pinheiro, Jan Voss, and Christo.

These years were crucial to the development of his formal vocabulary. This vocabulary was marked by the definition of small, abstract and apparently symmetrical figures. The urge for balance continued not only in the manner and handling of luminous and chromatic values present (the use of watercolour that permitting the creation of fine and translucent layers of overpainting), but also in an articulation of spiritual and metaphysical issues, expressed by researching and acknowledging the transcendental. This interest was clearly expressed by the artist: “I’ve searched for Reason that is more ample, that includes mystery, and is capable of explaining more things” (1958). This quest for a link between art and spiritual issues had already manifested itself in the mid 50s when the artist joined the Movement for the Renovation of Religious Art, formed by a group of artists who sought to articulate Modern Art with spiritual and religious manifestations.

At the start of his stay in Paris, José Escada was nominated by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to work with twelve artists from different countries on a project for the Dutch tobacco company TURMAC which provided the artist with the advantageous opportunity of spending a few days in Amsterdam.

When not working in watercolour, Escada created abstract compositions in oil, such as Sem Título (Untitled, 1965) where the dilutions are transformed into autonomous forms articulated by shadowy zones that tend to increase in the peripheral areas of the composition. This allows the signs at the centre of the painting to distinguish themselves from the lateral ones due to their chromatic and luminescent intensity, thereby creating images that summon the reflections and coloured rhythms of the stained glass on gothic cathedrals.

At the same time, the artist realised his investigations into shape and light through the creation of his “object paintings”, which used coloured papers symmetrically cut and folded. Escada’s interest in the human skeleton is extremely relevant to these works since the cut-outs evoke forms that are more than merely organic or figurative: they relate to the human body and its skeletal structure (particularly that of the spine).

What had once been the opposition light/dark became a game of real shadows and objects manifesting themselves in the surrounding space. This was further heightened when the artist abandoned the use of paper and began to cut out aluminium sheet and tin plate.

Relevo Espacial (Spatial Relief, 1974) summarises the artist’s research into the relationships between form/body and light/shadow. A large set of small cut-out metallic sheets (decreasing in size from the centre to the edges) set up on irregular grids invade the space, yet are in turn determined by the atmosphere and surrounding light in a way that creates different reflections, contrasting zones of almost absolute darkness with areas that are totally illuminated. The artist’s longstanding appreciation of forms and lines remains visible in the delicate metal cut-outs that reveal endless figurative possibilities.

In his final works the artist once again returned to painting, linking it to his personal memories and experiences.

ANA FILIPA RAMOS