Joaquim Rodrigo

Graduating in Agronomy in 1939, his inclination towards painting would only bloom as an adult, a situation that would clearly brand his path as that of an independent. Despite his self-taught beginnings, he would take a few courses in the 50s, namely at the National Society of Fine Arts (SNBA), bringing him close to a modernist penchant that was rarely expressed in Portugal. From a most private "cognitive project", Rodrigo created his very own, highly complex system of the pictorial practice. By understanding the modernist painting of the historical avant-gardes as a language which was developed according to a particular semiotic system, the artist would revaluate his ever-present, most important sources of information: science and art. His purpose was not to value geometric abstractization as a metaphysical transcendentalization, as in the early works of Kandinsky or, albeit differently, that of Mondrian and Malevich, but rather to use it as a radically new and operative concept. ¶ To Rodrigo the canvas became a space for perceptual research. He used diverse composition architectures, pursued the two-dimensional essence of the canvas, and recurred to striking formal and light contrasts, constantly opposing lines, as well as pure and organic forms, and complementary colours. This almost scientific abstraction project steered Rodrigo's pictorial production throughout the whole of the 50s. ¶ The 60s would herald a crucial transition for Joaquim Rodrigo. The first change that occurred was that he began bestowing an unexpected value upon the role of colour in the composition; the second was the creation of a complete symbolic vocabulary of painting, in which social and political conscience was allied to personal memories, inscribing figurative and verbal signs in the compositional field. A major influence and fascination of this time would be the reading of anthropologist José Redinha's book Paredes Pintadas da Lunda (The Painted Walls of Luanda, 1953), which moved Rodrigo towards a non-western narrative tradition. He would later elaborate on his own theory, writing between 1976 and 1982 Complementarismo em Pintura (Complementarism in Painting), a thorough and difficult "contribution to the science of art", which Rodrigo would uphold, until the end of his life, as the "painting right" method, a method that would enable any person to become a painter.