António Pedro (Cidade da Praia, Cabo Verde, 1909 – Moledo do Minho, 1966) was a multifaceted personality – painter, ceramist, poet, playwright, scenographer, critic, essay writer, gallerist, and more – a remarkable figure in the Portuguese culture of the 20th century. He studied Law, in Coimbra (1928-1930) and Historical Philosophical Sciences in Lisbon (1930-1931). He showed drawings and caricatures for the first time in 1925, in Viana do Castelo, and started poetry the following year, with the book Os meus sete pecados capitais [My seven capital sins]. Creator and director of newspaper A Bandeira, and member of the organisation of the I Independent Salon (1930), he was also the founder of the UP Gallery, the first Portuguese modern art gallery, where Maria Helena Vieira da Silva showed her work for the first time, in 1935. One year later, António Pedro had his first solo exhibition there – 20 Poemas Dimensionais e outros Desenhos [20 Dimensional Poems and other Drawings]. In 1934, he went to Paris, where he attended the Institut d’Art et Archéologie of the Sorbonne and other academies, and he signed, in the same year, the Dimensionist Manifesto, the principles of which he would disseminate in Portugal. Meanwhile, be began to manifest an interest in surrealist proposals, and he played an important role in their divulgation, in exhibitions like the one he did with António Dacosta and Pamela Boden at Casa Repe, in 1940. He was a forerunner within the context of surrealist literature, publishing the romance Apenas uma Narrativa [Just a Narrative], in 1942. Between 1944 and 1945, during the 2nd World War, he worked as a chronicler at the Portuguese division of the BBC, in London, where he had the possibility to meet the English surrealists, and participated in the exhibition Surrealist Diversity (Arcade Gallery, 1945). Back in Portugal, he played a key role in the creation of the Lisbon Surrealist Group and participated in the 1st Surrealist Exhibition, in 1949. Throughout his career, he worked regularly with magazines such as Presença, ABC and Horizonte. In the beginning of the 1950’s, he settled for good in Moledo do Minho, and dedicated himself essentially to the production of ceramics, and to this work as director, essay writer and scenographer at the Oporto Experimental Theatre. In 1979, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation organised a large retrospective exhibition of his work, which is present in various national collections.
FMV, October 2020
