Graduated in Sculpture at ESBAL (Lisbon’s Superior School of Fine Arts), completed with grants in Spain and Italy, Martins Correia began his solo exhibitions in 1938. He participated in the major official exhibitions of the Etat Nouveau, receiving orders and several awards.

In parallel to his production of sculptures for the public space – in which a style of Italian influence bestows a softer personal imprint to the official statuary – he paints, draws and illustrates, revealing a special preference for portraits. Later, in the 1960’s, he experiments an approach to abstraction.

The preference for bronze and polychromy are typical of his work, using frequently intense red, ocre, black, green and blue. He made several bas-relief in polychromed bronze, with figures from Portuguese history and culture, such as this work from 1985.

Associating the character of homage in medal making (in which he also worked) to the contemplative verticality derived from the application of bronze on wood, Martins Correia evokes Fernando Pessoa through an uncommon iconography: a flute player in the foreground, accompanied by a quadruped in the background, in a possible allusion to Pessoa’s poems with these themes (as, for instance, “A flute chirps in the night”).

Polychromy is used to animate the figures and to build the abstract space of the work, with its red spot on the right and the coloured spots on the centre and left. Following the circular format of the bronze, he inscribes on the left, in red letters, “Homage to Fernando Pessoa MCMLXXXV”. With a substantial economy of means, his homage to the poet stresses a festive simplicity, emphasizing Pessoa’s most telluric aspect, associated above all to his heteronym Alberto Caeiro.

LC

Rui Matos

Artworks

Sem Titulo [Untitled]2001

Joaquim Martins Correia

Menez