Stuart Carvalhais framed serigraph of varinas of Lisbon 32cm x 23,5cm
Multifaceted artist and experimentalist of the Portuguese modernism. He produced rapidly and in sketches, in such a frenetic way that he leaved thousands of originals dispersed. His works included illustrations and caricatures. He was a comic’s author and the director of ABC a Rir, a political and social satire magazine.
Stuart Carvalhais was a true connoisseur of the streets and alleys of a sleeping Lisbon. In the nights he spent wandering in the streets, with his partners, Stuart Carvalhais collected pieces of memories to later reproduce in his works.
Ferreira de Castro, in 1926, stated:
“Stuart is an album of weird guys, whipped by pain, by life’s sarcasms and in him the figures join Lisbon’s shadowy aspects, that part where the sun doesn’t lie every day, where there is always darkness.”
The everyday life was Stuart’s alimentation. The satires he published in ABC a Rir weren’t more than the matters that marked the days. His illustrations and drawings had many times as protagonists the people with whom he’d crossed: seamstresses, beggars, varinas, writers, politicians.Stuart Carvalhais passed, in Lisbon, on the 2nd of March, 1961. Posthumously, it was published in 1962 a book that honors the work of Stuart de Carvalhais and that gathers statements of the people who met and lived with the artist.
“Stuart e os Seus Bonecos” is an ode to the talent and work of Stuart Carvalhais. In this book stand out the opinions of Aquilino Ribeiro and Armando Paulouro:
“What a waste, Stuart! In a characterless means, with a much diminished culture, without a social stratification enjoyer of artistic beauty, he couldn’t find, I don’t dare say prize, but a proper incentive, his so singular pencil, son a born-geniality”.
Stuart is one of the most prolific artist of the entire world and, probably, none will ever be able to take pride in working for the press for so many years. If that same press had in Portugal, the minimum conditions that every artist needs to create, Stuart would be today the first world humoristic drawer”.