Nadir Afonso | |
|---|---|
 2007 digital portrait of Afonso | |
| Born | Nadir Afonso Rodrigues (1920-12-04)4 December 1920 |
| Died | 11 December 2013(2013-12-11) (aged 93) |
| Education | Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto,Porto École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts,Paris |
| Known for | Painting,Architecture |
| Notable work | Cities series |
| Movement | Geometric abstract art (alsoKinetic art,Op art) |
| Awards | Order of St. James of the Sword,[1] Portuguese Academy of Fine Arts |
| Patrons | Portinari,Vasarely,Léger,Auguste Herbin,André Bloc,Le Corbusier |
Nadir Afonso,GOSE (4 December 1920 – 11 December 2013) was a Portuguesegeometric abstractionist painter. Formally trained inarchitecture, which he practiced early in his career withLe Corbusier andOscar Niemeyer, Nadir Afonso later studied painting in Paris and became one of the pioneers ofKinetic art, working alongsideVictor Vasarely,Fernand Léger,Auguste Herbin, andAndré Bloc.[citation needed]
As a theorist of his owngeometry-basedaesthetics, published in several books, Nadir Afonso defended the idea that art is purely objective and ruled by laws that treat art not as an act of imagination but of observation, perception, and form manipulation.
Nadir Afonso achieved international recognition early in his career and many of his works are in museums. His most famous works are theCities series, which depict places all around the world. He was known to have painted into his later years and died on 11 December 2013, one week after his 93rd birthday, at a hospital in Cascais.[2] During his life he achieved great honors, representing his country at the finest level.
Nadir Afonso Rodrigues was born in the rural, remote town ofChaves,Portugal, on 4 December 1920. His parents were Palmira Rodrigues Afonso and the poet Artur Maria Afonso.[3] His very unusual first name was suggested by agypsy to his father on his way to the Civil Registry, where he was due to be registered as Orlando.[4]
By the age of four, he made his first "painting" on a wall at home: a perfect red circle, which anticipated his life as under the signs ofrhythm andgeometric precision. His teen years were dedicated to painting, and he won his first national prize at age 17. It was only natural that he was sent to the bigger city ofPorto to enroll in the School of Fine Arts to pursue a degree in painting. However, at the registration desk, he took the advice of the clerk, who told him that his high school diploma allowed him to enroll inArchitecture, which was then a more promising career. As he later admitted, he made a mistake by listening to that man.[4]
Nadir Afonso took on the challenge and graduated in architecture, though he flunked the third year because some of his professors could not accept his artistic style. Settled in Porto, he started to design houses and industrial buildings, while at the same time painting the city around him under his other surname, Rodrigues. As a member of the artist collectiveIndependentes, he took part in all theirart exhibitions until 1946 and became a favorite with the national critics. His oilA Ribeira was purchased by the Contemporary Art Museum ofLisbon in 1944, when he was only 24 years old.[citation needed]
In 1946, Nadir Afonso left Porto forParis with a number of unfinished works from his "Iris period", and changed his signature with the surname Afonso. There, a Brazilian painterCandido Portinari helped him secure a scholarship from the French Government to study art and painting at theÉcole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He resided at theHôtel des Mines in theLatin Quarter and spent his time regularly at students hangouts. Nadir Afonso recalls this period of his life as the first time that he was in contact with the great world of art.[4] Because his scholarship lasted only one year, Nadir Afonso worked until 1948 (and again in 1951) with the architectLe Corbusier who, knowing his passion for painting, gave him the mornings off without cutting his salary. He also worked for a while, with the artistFernand Léger.
While working under Le Corbusier in Paris, Nadir Afonso gradually developed his own style ofgeometric abstractionism. His new fundamentals ofaesthetics reoriented his concepts of the origin and essence of art that resulted in his 1948 researchthesis controversial to his architectural work,Architecture Is Not an Art. "Architecture is ascience, a team elaboration", and therefore a means of expression that cannot satisfy a solitary soul like him.[4] In 1949, Nadir Afonso left Paris and for a while immersed himself fully in his paintings. He went through a period of inspiration in the PortugueseBaroque, followed by anEgyptian period.
From December 1951 to 1954, Nadir Afonso crossed the Atlantic to answer an invitation to work with the Brazilian architectOscar Niemeyer; it was three years of "necessary architecture and obsessive painting".[4] That obsession forced him to return to Paris, looking for artists researchingkinetic art. He joined the group of the Denise René Gallery, connecting with French-Hungarian painterVictor Vasarely (father ofOp-art), Danish painter Richard Mortensen, French painterAuguste Herbin, and French architectAndré Bloc, culminating in 1958 with the public showing at theSalon des Réalités Nouvelles, of his animated paintingEspacillimité (now on display at theChiado Museum in Lisbon). His first book,La Sensibilité Plastique, was published the same year with the support of art critic Michel Gaüzes, patron Madame Vaugel and Victor Vasarely. In 1959, his first anthology exhibition took place at theMaison des Beaux-Arts in Paris, while initial exhibitions of his new style in his native country initially failed to raise as much interest as in the early expressionist years.
Paris was a world center of the arts but the fierce competition between artists proved too much for Nadir Afonso. In 1965, conscious of his social inadaptation, he moved back to his hometown ofChaves and gradually took refuge in isolation and accentuated the orientation of his life towards the creation of art. He terminated the architecture practice and pursued hisaesthetics studies based ongeometry, which he considered the essence of art. Once in a while, he left his hideout to return to Paris and meet with friends, authorRoger Garaudy, painterVictor Vasarely, and critic Michel Gaüzes. By indication of Garaudy, he traveled to Toulouse to meet aestheticist Pierre Bru, with whom he reviewed the syntactic form of his studies, before publishingLes Mécanismes de la Création Artistique (The Mechanisms of Artistic Creation), the book where he introduced his original theory of art as an exact science.
In 1974, he had asolo exhibition at the Selected Artists Galleries, in New York. U.S. critics acclaimed him as"one of the first proponents of geometric abstraction in Portugal [and] one of the new generation European artists."[5]
Living in reclusion, Nadir Afonso defined himself in 2006 as"Portuguese and a son of the inner country. I learned from tradition to be humble, to praise the masters, and to live these eighty-six years with the simplicity that my lowly status has always guaranteed me. To do a balance of my existence and of my work now is absurd."[4] He spent the last three decades of his life painting, exhibiting, and writing with regular and growing comfort. He was twice married, with five children, born between 1948 and 1989.
Nadir Afonso exhibited regularly in Lisbon, Porto, Paris, New York, and all over the world. His work is in museums in Lisbon and Porto (Portugal), Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Brazil), Budapest (Hungary), Paris (Pompidou Center), Wurzburg and Berlin (Germany), among others.[6] He formed a foundation bearing his name, to which he donated his personal artwork collection, and engagedPritzker Prize-winner architectÁlvaro Siza to design its headquarters in his hometown of Chaves.
The recognition of Nadir Afonso's talent came early in his career, both in his home country and internationally. Aged 24, an oil of his,A Ribeira, had already been purchased by the Contemporary Art Museum of Lisbon and the Portuguese government invited him twice to represent Portugal at theSão Paulo Art Biennial. By the age of 50, he was well known and regularly exhibited in New York and Paris.
However, his reclusive personality and the memory of his first attempt in 1946 to show his paintings at an art gallery in Paris, which snubbed him and left him humiliated, caused him to shy from publicity and he did not personally promote his exhibitions.[7]Victor Vasarely, the father ofop art, had already noticed it in 1968:
Art is usually conceived assubjective, but for Nadir Afonso it was purelyobjective and ruled bylaws."Art is a show of exactitude",[9]"a game of laws in spaces but not of significations in objects".[10] From these axioms, his own personal theory ofgeometry-based"rational aesthetics within an intuitive art"[11] evolved, which he published in book form, alongside his philosophical thoughts on the Universe and its laws. These works are the key to understanding the artist and his art, and are summarized by himself in a few words:
Because of hisrationalism, Nadir Afonso confrontedKandinsky, the father of abstract art, and criticized him for subduing geometry to the human spirit instead of making it the essence of art.[13] This"geometry of art" is not however the"geometry of geometrists", as it is not about symbols nor anything in particular; rather, it is the spatial law itself,[14] with the four qualities of perfection, harmony, evocation, and originality.[15]
His work is methodical, because"an artwork is not an act of 'imagination' (...) but of observation, perception, form manipulation."[16]"I start with shapes, still arbitrary. I put ten shapes on the frame; I look at it and suddenly a sort of spark ignites. Then the form appears. Color is secondary, used to accentuate the intensity of the form."[17] Nadir Afonso did not renege on his early expressionist and surrealist works:"An individual initially does not see the true nature of things, he starts by representing the real, because he is convinced therein lies the essence of the artwork. I thought that too. But, as I kept working, the underlying laws of art, which are the laws of geometry, slowly revealed themselves in front of my eyes. There was no effort on my part, it was just the daily work what led me to that result, guided by intuition."[18] The illustrations in this article are a chronological representation of the evolution of Nadir Afonso's style and thought towards the original geometric alphabet with which he created his artworks, as explained in his books and seen most prominently in hisCities series.
Nadir Afonso produced mainly paintings andserigraphs. His preferred materials wereacrylic paint oncanvas (bigger works), andgouache on paper (smaller works, often studies for bigger works). His best-known and most distinctive work is theCities series, each painting usually representing a city from anywhere in the world.
As of 2007[update], approximate prices for hisCities works were €1,500 for a 35x50 cm serigraph (typical edition of 200),[19] €18,000 for a 30x40 cm gouache on paper, and €55,000 for a 90x140 cm acrylic on canvas. In 2007, Nadir Afonso exhibited his first oversized (176x235 cm) canvases,Seville andPouvoirs Surnaturels, at a price of €100,000 each.[20] Other values are mentioned in the list ofNadir Afonso artworks.
Only solo international and major exhibitions are shown.[20]
An additional 60 solo exhibitions in Portugal were recorded between 1949 and 2012 (last one: Palazzo Loredan, Venice). Additional international collective exhibitions include: 1967 Brussels, 1968 Paris, 1973 Barcelona, 1984 Dublin, 1986 Honolulu and Fall River, U.S.; 1993 Salamanca, Spain.
The following books were written by Nadir Afonso in Portuguese, unless otherwise stated. Additional written works appear in exhibition catalogs and are noted in the list of Nadir Afonso exhibitions.
 | Constructs such asibid.,loc. cit. andidem arediscouraged byWikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Pleaseimprove this article by replacing them withnamed references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title.(August 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
