Sarah AFFONSO (1899-1983)

Sarah Affonso was born on May 13th, 1899, in Lisbon, during the upheaval of the fin de siècle, a time replete with mental and political changes that would culminate in Portuguese Modernism.

Sarah was the eldest of six siblings and was obliged to dedicate herself to them.

Despite having been born in the country’s capital, her life and work was in no manner influenced by the city. At the age of five, Sarah moved to Viana do Castelo. Her painting thrives on the memory of Viana’s blue skies, sea and the day-to-day life of the country folk, the feasts, processions, funfairs and fishermen. Works like Casamento na Aldeia (Village Wedding) or even Meninas (Girls), exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1927, in Paris, feature the innocence and colourful imagination of her childhood.

Sarah Affonso studied Painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Art. She was fortunate to be one of Columbano’s last students, and as one of his disciples, was greatly protected, even though she soon detached herself from the master’s Naturalism.

Sarah learnt how to seek her sitter’s intimate feelings with her brush, rendering a psychological interpretation of each figure. Portrait of Tagarro and Waldemar da Costa (1929) from the CAMJAP collection is an example of this. The distant and nonchalant air of her sitters, although one of them seems to defy the observer with his glance, is mingled with an absent, thoughtful and undefined attitude. The dense and dark colours relate to an interior expressiveness. The different shades in the background unite the two men, who thus become indistinguishable. Their faces reflect the green hue of one of their shirts and one of the tones in the background, reinforcing this interaction which Sarah additionally increases with the centre tone of red that unites and separates them, underlining the expressiveness of their faces, united at this point. Sarah was interested in their interior being, and thus presents their fingers and clothes without definition and detail, as mere accessories. Her wide strokes define surfaces with smooth shades and marked spaces.

In other works, Sarah Affonso also portrays the family with the symbolic and affective imaginary that invokes a popular iconography.

Within its context of revolutions and marked by its prejudices, Portugal had delayed its entrance into the 20th century and remained on the brim of European cultural and intellectual life. Understanding this, Sarah moved to Paris, as did most of the great artists of her generation. It was the roaring twenties, and Paris, overflowed with the sumptuousness of the Belle Époque. Sarah lived and revelled in all of its grand activities: painting, music, theatre and the Russian Ballets. As she had been taught to do by her master, she created her own way of being modern. She participated in various individual and collective shows, presenting her works besides great International and Portuguese artists like Eduardo Viana.

When she returned to Lisbon, she frequented and kept company with intellectuals at A Brasileira café, even though it was quite unconventional for a woman to associate with the bohemian art world.

Her composition’s imaginary was influenced by this milieu. The “Geração de Orpheu”– those who decided the definite, yet tardy change of thought in Portugal– included Almada Negreiros, Mário Eloy, Santa Rita, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and many other artists like Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, whom she admired and met only after hearing him deliver a speech.

Sarah Affonso married Almada Negreiros in 1934. She gave up her painting in favour of a domestic life, craftwork, interior decoration and gardening. However, during the period she lived in Moledo, her work unveiled itself into a very original phase. Sarah applied herself to embroideries depicting shrines, weddings, folklore motifs and festivities, blending tradition and the beliefs that remained from her childhood imagination: the memories of Viana.

She ended her work as an oil painter in 1948. With the death of her husband in 1970, Sarah dedicated herself to drawing and illustrating books for children: she felt herself so close to their imaginative lives that she thought she was capable of arousing their full attention.

Sarah Affonso died in 1983 at the age of eighty four, thirteen years after her husband, Almada.

RITA CÔRTE FERREIRA