“Amadeo de Souza Cardoso left Lisbon for Paris in 1906. He had just turned nineteen and intended to continue the architecture studies he had begun in Lisbon. However the Paris artistic milieu radically changed his life in that it opened to him the world of painting. In 1907, the writer Manuel Laranjeira, enthused with the drawings that he was receiving from his young friend in Paris, did not hesitate to recognize him as “an artist in the absolute meaning of the term.”
“… As for his painting, Souza Cardoso was determined to show his work outside the Parisian circuit. The contacts he had established led him to participate in a series of important group exhibitions, among them the celebrated 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, also called The Armory Show.” (See photos of the 2008 Armory Show.)
– Excerpt from Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, A Biography
Luckily, Lisbon’s Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Art Library of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) has a small collection of photos of the life of Souza Cardoso, and has shared them with us in The Commons on Flickr.
The Biblioteca de Arte also has some wonderful images of the gothic architecture of Portugal collected in a photographic survey in the 1950s, which will hopefully be making their way into The Commons in the coming months. Meanwhile, these candid portraits of Souza Cardoso complement to the Smithsonian Institution’s "Portraits of Artists" set.
In other Commons news, The Library of Congress‘ photostream recently steamed past 9 million views since their launch into The Commons in January. WOW! In addition to the 500 or so updates made to The Library of Congress catalogue (as a direct result of the feedback received via Flickr), the Powerhouse Museum has also “closed the circle,” beginning to re-ingest tags added to their Commons photos back into their collection. YAY!
We’re continuing to work on developing more views into The Commons, including
this new tag cloud view of all the photos so far, as well as a special page for photos tagged with, say, texas, that are just in The Commons. It’s funny… I hadn’t realised all those gorgeous Rosie The Riveter shots were taken in October of 1942 until I was poking around the new tag views.
Don’t stop taggin’! It’s wonderful.