Amadeo de Souza Cardoso

Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (14 November 1887 – 25 October 1918) was a Portuguese painter.

Belonging to the first generation of Portuguese modernist painters, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso stands out among all of them for the exceptional quality of his work and for the dialogue he established with the historical avant-gardes of the early 20th century. "The artist developed, between Paris and Manhufe, the most serious possibility of modern art in Portugal in an international dialogue, intense but little known, with the artists of his time". His painting is articulated with open movements such as Cubism, Futurism or Expressionism, reaching in many moments - and in a sustained way in the production of recent years - a level comparable in everything to the cutting-edge production of his contemporary international art.

Death at the age of 30 will dictate the abrupt end of a fully mature pictorial work and a promising international career but still in the process of affirmation. Amadeo would be forgotten a long time ago, inside and, above all, outside Portugal: "The silence that for many years covered the interpretive visibility of his work with a thick blanket […], and that was also the silence of Portugal as a country, not allowed the international historical update of the artist "; and "Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso just started his path of historiographic recognition".