Júlio Pomar

Júlio Pomar

Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar (born January 10, 1926 in Lisbon , Portugal ; † May 22, 2018 there ) was a Portuguese painter . He was also active as an illustrator , author, ceramic artist, sculptor , set designer and draftsman . Pomar is considered one of the great painters of Portugal in the second half of the 20th century.

Life

Júlio Pomar was born in Lisbon. At the age of eight a friend of the family, who was himself a sculptor, recognized the boy's talent and made it possible for him to take his first painting courses at the renowned Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio in Lisbon. At the age of 16 in 1942, he moved to the Escola de Belas Artes in Lisbon, where he stayed until 1944, when he switched to the Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto in the same year . As a student he was active in the resistance against the Salazar regime, sympathized with the Communist Party of Portugal (PCP), was involved in student struggles and became a member of the Movimento União Democratica (MUD) and the student group "Os Independentes" (The Independents), what earned him four months in prison and the loss of his university place in Porto. This is also the reason why Pomar could not get an official degree from an art school. He also began to write for various, mostly left-wing, art and literary magazines: A Tarde , Seara Nova , Vertice , Mundo Literario , Horizonte . He was invited by the painter Jose Sobral de Almada-Negreiros to take part in the 7th Modern Art Exhibition of the National Propaganda Ministry in Lisbon. In 1950 he went to Spain for a year to devote himself to intensive studies of the work of Francisco Goya , whose work had a lasting influence on him.

From 1963 he lived in Paris and had his studio in Auteuil . His picture Les Courses was shown there in the Locloche Gallery. The student protests in Paris in 1968, in which he was involved as a simple activist, left a lasting impression on his person and his work.

In 1953, 1975 and 1985 he took part in the São Paulo Art Biennale . The Gulbenkian Foundation held a first retrospective of his work in 1978.

In 2004 the Júlio Pomar Fundação (foundation) was established in Lisbon, which was later converted into the Museum and Workshop Júlio Pomar (i.e. a museum with his pictures and the artist's studio, which you could sometimes watch while working). The former Lisbon mayor and son of ex-President Mário Soares , João Soares , played a decisive role here. The building of the museum was designed by the world famous architect and Pritzker Prize winner Álvaro Siza Vieira .

Pomar was married several times and had several children. He lived alternately in Paris and Lisbon. He died on May 22, 2018 at the age of 92 in the Hospital da Luz in Lisbon.

The painter and the work

In addition to Goya, other artists also inspired him: from the field of literature, these were above all Alves Redol and Soeiro Pereira Gomes , whose figures often inspired him to paint. Then there were Latin Americans like the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari and the Mexican painters Diego Rivera , David Alfaro Siqueiros and the painter José Clemente Orozco . Of European painters, it was above all Henri Matisse and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , whose works had a great influence on his work. His painting of the 50s and 60s was thus mainly influenced by neo-Goyanism, the following decades by realism . He had his first participation in a group exhibition in 1942, his first solo exhibition in 1947 in Porto. In 1983 and 1984 he designed various azulejos with portraits of four famous Portuguese poets for Lisbon 's Alto dos Moinhos subway station : Camões , Bocage , Pessoa and Almada Negreiros . He also designed the “Jardin Botanique” metro station in Brussels in 1992, and commissioned portraits of well-known Portuguese people were also accepted by him: for example, he painted Maria Lamas or the writer Mario Dionisio (1916–1993). He had a well-known solo exhibition in 1997 in Charleroi , Belgium , entitled " Pomar et la Litterature " (Pomar and literature). He was also able to make a name for himself as an essayist: In 2000 the essay volume “Entao ea Pintura?” (So painting too?) Was published .

His work has been shown in solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and themed exhibitions (e.g. on Portuguese painting) in the following cities: Porto, Paris, Tokyo , Pittsburgh , Athens , Baghdad , Leeds , Lisbon, Madrid , Funchal , Salamanca , Nanterre , Bobigny , São Paulo , Rio de Janeiro , Rome , Milan , Estoril , London , Caracas , Brussels , Mexico City , Beijing , Biarritz , New York City , Istanbul , Macau , Charleroi .

So far, his work is hardly known in Germany.

Web links

Commons : Júlio Pomar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Júlio Pomar. artnet 
• Antigos Estudantes Ilustres da Universidade do Porto. University of Porto , May 25, 2018(Portuguese). 
• Júlio Pomar. O neo-realismo, edepois (1942–1968). Scribd (Portuguese). 
• Júlio Pomar. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian , May 2010. 
• Júlio Pomar. Clube Nacional de Artes Plásticas(Portuguese). 
• Rita Cipriano: Morreu Júlio Pomar, “nome maior da pintura moderna portuguesa” e “um criativo irreverente e rebelde”. In: Observador. May 22, 2018 (Portuguese).