Ruy Roque Gameiro

Monumento aos Mortos pela Pátria 1914-1918 , Abrantes , Portugal

Monumento aos Mortos na Grande Guerra , Maputo , Mozambique

Ruy Roque Gameiro (born February 27, 1906 in Amadora , † August 18, 1935 near Sintra ) was a Portuguese sculptor. Despite his short life, Gameiro gained some notoriety, thanks in particular to his two monumental monuments in Abrantes, Portugal, and Maputo, the Mozambican capital .

Life

Ruy Roque Gameiro was born on February 27, 1906 as the youngest child of the painter Alfredo Roque Gameiro . His four siblings were also known as painters. Gameiro later trained as a car mechanic at the Escola Secundária Marquês de Pombal in Lisbon. He later attended the Lisbon Escola das Belas Artes , where he completed his second training as a sculptor in 1928 with the work “Abel e Caim” (Abel and Cain). There he befriended José Tagarro and Sarah Afonso .

The following year, he exhibited a work for the first time in the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes , a graceful statue of a woman with the title “Salomé”. He later took part in the first and second salons of the Independent Artists' Movement ("Salão dos Independentes") in Lisbon in 1930 and 1931.

In 1933 Gameiro married his wife Maria Helena Castelo Branco. Two years later - at the age of 29 - he died in a traffic accident on his motorcycle on the way to Sintra .

plant

Gameiro's two most famous works are two statues in memory of the fallen of the First World War , in Abrantes and Maputo (then Lourenço Marques). The Abrantes plant, dating from 1930, was the first of its kind in Portugal and was called “Monumento aos Mortos pela Pátria 1914-1918” (Memorial to the Fallen of the Fatherland 1914-1918). The second work, for what was then Lourenço Marques in the colony of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique), was created in 1934/35 in collaboration with the architect António Reis Camelo ; it is entitled “ Monumento aos mortos na Grande Guerra ” (Memorial to the fallen of Great War). Both works are characterized by the policy of “política do Espírito” (politics of the mind), which was enforced at the time by the Estado Novo, and corresponded to contemporary tastes. They mark a strong nationalism and the glorification of the fallen of the "Great War" as martyrs for the fatherland.

In addition to these two works, he also designed the statue of D. Joãos II on Avenida da Índia for the Lisbon city council (1930). In addition, he posthumously won the competition for the statue Infante D. Henriques (Henry the Navigator) in Sagres in 1936 , in collaboration with Carlos and Guilherme Rebelo de Andrade.

Web links

Commons : Ruy Roque Gameiro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Detailed information and biography about Roque Gameiro (port.)
• Photos of his works

Individual evidence

1. ↑ All information in the article relates to Ruy Roque Gameiro. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 5, 2014 ; Retrieved September 16, 2014 (Portuguese). 
2. ↑ Gerbert Verheij: Monumentalidade e espaço público em Lourenço Marques nas Decadas de 1930 e 1940 . Ed .: University of Barcelona, ​​Polis Research Center. tape January 20 , 2012, ISSN  1139-7365 , p. 18–34 (Portuguese, pdf - summary of the master's thesis of the same name, January 2012, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa).