ALMADA NEGREIROS Orpheu Poet, Futurist & Everything

José Sobral de Almada Negreiros was a portuguese painter, poet, writer, essayist and dramatist born in São Tomé e Príncipe in 1893.

Known for his contributions to the artistic magazine Orpheu, Almada was one of the pioneers in Modern Literature and Art in Portugal, alongside with Fernando Pessoa, Santa-Rita Pintor and Amadeo Souza-Cardoso.

In 1913, Almada presents 90 of his drawings in his first individual exhibition. In the same year he meets Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá Carneiro. This group will eventually edit the Magazine Orpheu in 1915, that would introduce modern literature in Portugal.

Almada Negreiros was known for hist constant and prolific artistic production. By the end of the 1910’s, he had already painted and illustrated many paintings and drawings, even murals or glass- windows.

His novels, essays, manifests and plays would make of him a social agitator and a rough critic on the portuguese society and its meagre taste in art and literature, being highly provocative like in the “Manifest Anti-Dantas”.

Although a controversial figure due to his writings and declarations in which he afirmed being a chauvinist and a suporter of the fascist ideals, Almada always kept and open mind, travelling around Europe constantly.

Between 1933 and 1942, he did public mural paintings and propaganda posters supporting the fascist regime of Oliveira Salazar.

We want a strong State ! Vote in a new Consti tution

Probably his best known Art Work is a painting of his fellow poet Fernando Pessoa.

Almada Negreiros died in Lisbon, in 1970, in the same Hospital room where Fernando Pessoa passed away, in 1935.