Guilherme Santa-Rita (Lisbon, 1889 – Lisbon, 1918), or Santa-Rita painter, as he would be known, did his first studies in Lisbon, at the Fine Arts School, and while still as a student he did the painting Orfeu nos Infernos, his most emblematic work. In 1910, he went to Paris, which was then the epicentre of the vanguard movements. He stayed in Paris until 1914, when the beginning of the Great War forced him to return to Lisbon. Little is known of the life of the artist and of the scarce artistic production that he left behind. One of the few examples is the painting Head, dated from the Paris period, from around 1912. Upon his return to Portugal, he was a crucial agent in the introduction and dissemination of Futurism, with which he had become acquainted in Paris, where he probably met Marinetti himself. In 1915, he collaborated in the Orpheu magazine, which in spite of having been published only twice, inspired the movements responsible for transforming the culture in Portugal, marking the one that would be known as the Orpheu Generation. Two years later, he was the author of the only edition of Portugal Futurista magazine and one of the organisers of the Futurist conference, at Teatro República, both important dissemination vehicles of the futuristic values. Besides Head, four other collages and four other paintings by Santa-Rita are known, portrayed in the aforementioned magazines. However, with the lack of knowledge about his trajectory and work, doubts arose, throughout the years, as to the authorship of these works. Apparently, the lack of works might have been the cause, as with other artists of the time, for at the time of his death, he left instructions with his family to destroy everything. Santa-Rita painter never showed his work in Portugal. He died in 1918, and thus disappeared the expression of Futurism in Portugal, where as far as plastic arts are concerned, it manifested almost exclusively through him.
FMV, September 2020
