Manuel Cargaleiro

Manuel Cargaleiro was born in Chão das Servas, in the municipality of Vila Velha de Ródão, in 1927, and died in 2024. A painter and ceramicist, he attended the Sculpture course at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa. His contact with José Trindade's pottery workshop in Monte da Caparica awakened his interest in modelling clay. In 1952 he presented his first solo exhibition of ceramics at the Palácio Foz in Lisbon.

In 1954 he received the Prémio Nacional de Cerâmica Sebastião de Almeida and began teaching Ceramics at the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio. That same year he took part in the "Primeiro Salão de Arte Abstracta" at Galeria de Março, where he showed his first oil paintings, and made his first trip to Paris.

In 1957 a grant from the Italian Government enabled him to further his study of ceramics in Faenza, Rome and Florence. The following year he held a scholarship from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian at the Gien faience factory in France. He settled in Paris at the end of the 1950s, maintaining a close relationship with Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes and becoming part of the Parisian art scene.

His work developed through a continuous dialogue between painting and ceramics, bringing together the tradition of the Portuguese azulejo and the experiments of abstraction. The geometric organisation of surfaces, the rhythms of drawing and chromatic harmonies define a language in which references to nature, architecture and the Portuguese landscape persist. Flowers, cities and small interwoven forms appear in compositions suffused with light and intense colour. He also worked in drawing, printmaking and tapestry.

He exhibited regularly in Portugal and abroad, notably at the Galerie Albert Loeb in Paris from 1973 onwards and at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in 1984. He created numerous ceramic works integrated into architecture, among them the tiling of the Champs-Élysées - Clemenceau station of the Paris Metro, inaugurated in 1995.

He established the Fundação Manuel Cargaleiro in 1990. In 2005 he opened the Museu Cargaleiro in Castelo Branco, devoted to his work and to the collections he assembled. His ties to Italy gave rise to museum spaces in Vietri sul Mare and Ravello. In 2016 the Oficina de Artes Manuel Cargaleiro, designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira, opened in Seixal.

His distinctions include the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry in 2017 and the Grand Cross of the Order of Camões in 2023. His work is held in collections including those of the Centro de Arte Moderna of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, MACAM, the Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado and Culturgest.