Delfim Maya

Delfim Maya was born in 1886 and died in 1978. Self-taught, he first followed a military career as a cavalry officer, from which he was dismissed in 1919 for having fought for the monarchist cause. In 1930 he was imprisoned in the Fort of São Tiago in Funchal, a period to which some watercolours of boats belong. That same year, aged 44, he decided to make his living from art.

He began with watercolour around 1908 and with caricature in the early 1910s. Many of his early drawings and the caricatures of 1931-1932 are signed "Mifled", an anagram of Delfim. He took up sculpture at the start of the 1930s and in 1934 became the first Portuguese sculptor to make sculpture from industrial sheet iron and other metals: he laid out his figures flat, cut them out and folded them, moving from the plane into volume.

He worked in clay, plaster, bronze, sheet iron, cut copper, silver and gold sheet and Vista Alegre porcelain. Horses and equestrian themes lie at the heart of his work, alongside bullfighting and life on the lezíria, female figures such as varinas and Andalusian dancers, courting couples, animals such as big cats, dogs, cockerels and deer, and equestrian and military scenes. His passion for life and movement set his sculpture apart in the context of its time.

He showed the bronze "Jockey" at the 1932 Salon d’Automne in Paris. He made busts of generals and other officers, religious pieces in silver and gold sheet, and a bas-relief of a cavalry charge, a small-scale replica of the one on the façade of the former Practical Cavalry School in Santarém.

In 1987 the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation marked the centenary of his birth with a commemorative exhibition curated by José Sommer Ribeiro, which travelled to Vila Franca de Xira, the José Malhoa Museum in Caldas da Rainha and the Foundation’s headquarters in Lisbon, bringing together his painting, graphic work and sculpture. The monograph "Delfim Maya, 1886-1978" was published in 1998. He is represented, among other institutions, at the José Malhoa Museum and the Vila Franca de Xira Municipal Museum, both of which lent works to that exhibition.