The XX Century
The 1950's renewal:
the tile designers
he 1950's witnessed the unequivocal adoption of international functionalist parameters in architecture. The new generation of architects asked young plastic artists such as Júlio Resende (b. 1917), Júlio Pomar (b. 1926) and Sá Nogueira (b. 1921) to create tile panels for many of the buildings and urban spaces they constructed.
The urban development process was also to lead to the creation of new infrastructures like the Lisbon Underground. The walls of the stations built up until 1972 were covered with tile compositions designed by Maria Keil (b. 1914). Her fundamentally abstract language definitively renewed and updated the traditional Portuguese taste for surfaces covered with all-embracing ceramics.
Anjos Underground Station,
Maria Keil,
Lisbon, 1965.
photograph: Paulo Cintra and Laura
Castro Caldas
Study for a wall in Alameda Station,
Lisbon Underground,
Maria Keil, 1971.
photograph: Paulo Cintra and Laura Castro Caldas
Pousada de Santa Catarina,
Júlio Resende, Miranda do Douro, 1959.
photograph: Carlos Monteiro (DDF-IPM)
Building with pattern tiles,
José Carlos Loureiro, OPorto, 1958.
photograph: Paulo Cintra and Laura Castro Caldas
Avenida Infante Santo retaining wall,
Lisbon, Maria Keil, 1956 · 1958.
photograph: (DDF-IPM)
© Instituto Camões, 2000