Portuguese Azulejo History:
"Original aspects of the use of tiling in Portugal
AZULEJO is a Portuguese word used to denote a square plaque of ceramic material, one side of which is decorated and glazed.
Azulejos of this kind are also employed in other countries, such as Spain, Italy, Holland, Turkey, Iran and Morocco, but they occupy a particularly important place in the overall panorama of Portuguese artistic creativity:
1. Due to the fact that they have been used for five centuries without interruption.
2. Due to the way in which they are used — as a determining element in Portuguese architecture, covering large surface areas on both the inside and outside of buildings.
3. Due
to the significance that has been attached to them over the centuries — they are not just seen as decorative art, but also as a basis for the display of new tastes and a record of the images in the lexicon of their users? fantasies.
Tiling in Portugal:
A tolerant art form ranging from exoticism to sensuality the AZULEJO is one of the distinctive elements of Portuguese culture and reveals some of its deepest sources, including:
1. The ability to dialogue with other Peoples - apparent in the Portuguese taste for exotic items in which European cultural themes mix with those of the Arab and
Indian cultures, for example.
2. An expedite sense of the practical - revealed in the use of a material which is traditionally thought of as a poor relation, but which in Portugal is used as a means of aesthetically upgrading both the interiors of buildings and urban spaces as a whole.
3. A specific type of sensibility that is oriented more towards sensual values than conceptual ones, manifesting itself in a preference for a colourful material which reflects the light and for the immediate means of expression offered by the tile paintings, as well as in a choice of images that is centred on a
description of reality.
The XV and XVI Centuries
The Islamic tradition the first known Portuguese examples of the use of AZULEJOS as a monumental wall-covering employed Hispano-Moorish tiles which were imported from Seville in around 1503.
One of the lasting consequences of the Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula was the continued practise of tile making. Seville was the great centre of the tile industry, which continued to employ the archaic "cuerda seca" and "cuenca" techniques until the mid XVI century.
The motifs on the tiles evolved from geometric Moorish lace-like and
looping designs into European plant and animal themes which gradually progressed from the Gothic to the pure Renaissance style.
Nevertheless, quite apart from the motifs themselves, Portugal retained a Moorish taste for excess in the practise of completely covering surfaces with decorations - a kind of rejection of emptiness.
The XVI Century
The Italian and Flemish
Influences
He development of the ceramic art in Italy led to the use of the majolica technique to paint directly onto tiles. This made it possible to expand compositions to include a variety of figurative themes, historical stories
and decorations.
A number of Italian ceramists moved to the Flanders region, where they disseminated mannerist decorative motifs and the themes of classical antiquity.
After Portuguese orders had been placed in Flanders, some Flemish ceramists moved to Lisbon, where they initiated the production of tiles in Portugal itself from the second half of the XVI century onwards.
Certain typical motifs with their origin in the Flemish mannerist style were in international use at the time and were adopted by Portuguese tile painters to create monumental compositions guided by the erudite skills of
Masters of drawing and painting such as Francisco and Marçal de Matos.
The XVII Century
Repetitive tiles
l though the taste for covering surfaces with monumental ceramic displays was by now well established in Portugal, commissioning large and unique compositions individually adapted to each space was an expensive affair, and so repetitive patterns became more common.
Chequered designs became popular at the end of the XVI and the beginning of the XVII centuries. They were composed of plain coloured tiles, alternated in such a way as to create decorative patterns on walls. However,
although the tiles themselves were cheap, laying the chequered patterns was slow and complex and therefore expensive, a factor which gradually led to their disappearance.
Standard-pattern tiles, which were produced in large quantities and were easy to apply, then began to appear. At first they were supplied in repetitive modules of 232, but the modules gradually increased in size over the course of the XVII century until they finally reached units of 12312, thus creating rhythmically powerful diagonal patterns.
All these chequered and standard-pattern tiles needed borders and bars around them to ensure their
proper integration into the contours and architectural ramifications of the buildings.
The XVII Century
Freedom of interpretation
Portuguese tile painters used engravings of ornaments they received from elsewhere in Europe to create ceramic coverings destined for large wall surfaces - a task which required an imaginative transposition of scale.
The XVII century images produced in this way include the so-called ?grotesques" - secular motifs from ancient Rome which had been recovered a century earlier by the painter Rafael in order to decorate the Vatican. Widely disseminated around
Europe, in Portugal they were employed in the tiling of churches, albeit incorporated into religious themes.
Their fantastic nature made these "grotesques" popular with a people which was then in close touch with distant cultures. This was also the reason why the tile painters sought inspiration from chintz - a type of exotic printed calico from India used as an antependium in front of altars - which they transferred to their ceramic work. These designs were often used in conjunction with western themes and adapted to a Catholic symbolism in what constitutes one of the most interesting cases of transculturation
in the Portuguese decorative arts.
The XVII Century
Figurative diversity
While figurative tiles were designed in harmony with the space in which they were to be laid, be it religious or civil, the ceramic workshops nevertheless accumulated veritable libraries of engravings which they re-used in different orders.
Hunting, warlike, mythological and satirical scenes were all transposed onto tiles, where they were freely interpreted in colour by artisans with no academic training, before either being applied to large surfaces on buildings or, on a smaller scale, being used to replace oil canvasses
painted according to the European tradition.
The Church ordered small individual panels depicting saints, religious emblems and narrative scenes painted in a style that was ingenuous compared to the great religious cycles of the next century.
The more secular works found their clientele among the nobility, who used them to decorate the new palaces they built both in Lisbon and in the country following the restoration of Portugal?s independence from Spain in 1640.
The Palace of the Marquises of Fronteira in Lisbon contains one of the most important collections from this period. Alongside mythological
and battle themes, we find satirical scenes known literally as "monkey business", full of irony and a sense of nonsense.
The XVII · XVIII Centuries
Works ordered
from Holland
ver a period of nearly fifty years beginning in the last quarter of the XVII century, Portugal imported a number of monumental sets of tiles from the Low Countries.
The Dutch tiles were conceived by qualified painters such as Willem van der Kloet and Jan van Oort, and both their technical superiority and blue paintings (inspired by Chinese porcelain) were to the taste of the Portuguese market. The Dutch
manufacturers also contributed to their success by adapting their work to Portuguese preferences and creating monumental works.
These imports forced the Portuguese producers to react and employ painters with an academic training, thus responding to the needs of an ever more demanding clientele. Thanks to the quality of the new Portuguese tiles, the temptation to import faded away naturally and the last major order from Holland was delivered in 1715.
Besides these large figurative panels, the Low Countries also exported more ordinary tiles known as "single figures", each of which portrayed an autonomous
scene. They represented an intimate style which particularly appealed to Dutch tastes, but in Portugal they were employed in accordance with local tradition, with frames painted onto the tiles themselves.
The XVIII Century
The "Cycle of the Masters"
In the early XVIII century tile painters regained the status of artists and often signed their panels.
The precursor of this trend was the Spaniard Gabriel del Barco, who was active in Portugal during the last decade of the XVII century.<P></P> He introduced a taste for more exuberant decorative surrounding tiles and a style of painting that
was freed from the strict framework imposed by drawing.
These innovations opened up the market for other artists, thereby initiating a golden period of Portuguese tile-making - the "Cycle of the Masters" - in reaction to imports from Holland. The painters applied an original spontaneity to their works that was reflected in a very free and pictorial use of engravings and in the creativity of the compositions themselves, which were adapted to the architectural designs on which they were to appear.
António Pereira, Manuel dos Santos and the artist identified only by the monogram "PMP" were the most
important tile painters of the time, although we should also note the work of António de Oliveira Bernardes and his son Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes.
Notable for his composition, António Bernardes was foremost among the Masters when it came to modelling figures and handling the spaces around them. Thanks to his great technical and artistic capacity, he was the principle creator of the most sophisticated figurative Portuguese tiles of the time.
The XVIII Century
The "Great Production"
of Tiles during the Reign of king Dom João V
The second quarter of the XVIII century witnessed an
unprecedented increase in the manufacture of Portuguese tiles, partly due to large orders from Brazil.
This was the period of the so-called ?Great Production", which overlapped the reign of King Dom João V (1706-1750) and saw the execution of the largest cycles of historical panels ever employed in Portugal.
This increase in output led to the repetition of the same conformations, the use of ordered motifs like "albarradas" (vases of flowers) and the simplification of the painting of the scenes themselves. The surrounding frames also took on a major scenographic importance.
The continuation of the Cycle
of the Masters can be seen in the quality of the work of a number of later painters such as Nicolau de Freitas, Teotónio dos Santos and Valentim de Almeida.
Alongside the religious themes ordered by the Church, the tiles used to decorate palaces began to employ more bucolic, mythological, hunting and war-like scenes, as well as those taken from daily life at court. This was particularly obvious in the so-called "welcoming figures" placed in the entrances to buildings.
The XVIII Century
The Rococo
In the mid XVIII century the tastes of Portuguese society underwent a change with the
adoption of a grammatical form of decoration that was influenced partly by the French Regency style, but above all by Rococo engravings from central Europe.
The preference for organic forms - the most typical example of which is the irregular shell - can be seen in delicate compositions in which the decorative effects were first achieved by the use of two contrasting tones of blue and then by that of various colours.
Most of the figurative panels of the period display gallant and bucolic scenes taken from engravings by Watteau.
The earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755 meant that the city had to
be rebuilt from scratch. Ancient tile patterns were retrieved as a means of enlivening an architectural style that had become very bare and functional due to the urgency of the reconstruction work. This type of tiling became known as Pombaline, after the Marquis of Pombal, who, as King Dom José I's chief minister, was responsible for rebuilding Lisbon.
Along with the religious themes in the churches, it became very popular to place small devotional panels on the façades of buildings as a protection against great disasters.
The XVIII · XIX Centuries
The Neoclassicism
Thanks largely to the
work of the Real Fábrica de Louça in the Rato area of Lisbon, at the end of the XVIII century Portuguese tiling assimilated the influence of Neoclassicism, an international style disseminated by the engravings of Robert and James Adam. In Portugal this innovation was associated on tiles with landscapes painted by Jean Pillement.
Ceramic panels now took the form of low ashlars and were co-ordinated with fresco painting. The tiles recall the fresco style with its unadorned, white, painted backgrounds, taking on a lightness and a profuse variety of themes and compositions which made this type of combination one of
the most surprising ever achieved.
The panels were covered with light embellishments in refined polychrome tones and with very little volume. Their centres were pinpointed with monochrome calligraphic medallions and they matched the taste of the new bourgeoisie, which also began to order large quantities of tiles.
This new class of customer chose panels which told the story of their social successes and represented elegant figures of the period, while the Church remained faithful to its traditional religious cycles and the aristocracy to the themes it had always preferred.
The XIX Century
Azulejo façades
With the definitive rise of a bourgeoisie linked to trade and industry, (re)born out of the economic chaos into which Portugal was plunged after the French invasions (1807-1811) and the civil war between the Absolutists and the Liberals (1832-1834), a new use had been found for the Portuguese tile.
In the second half of the XIX century the less expensive standard-pattern tile covered thousands of façades. It was produced by factories in Lisbon (Viúva Lamego, Sacavém, Constância and Roseira) and Oporto and Gaia (Massarelos and Devezas).
Using either semi-industrial or industrial
techniques that made production more rapid and precise, their colour and variations of light turned façades composed of standard-pattern tiles with borders delimiting doors and windows into essential elements of the Portuguese urban identity.
Two styles of tile developed in the main factories, which were concentrated in Lisbon and Oporto. In the north of the country, tiling was characterised by its use of pronounced relief and a taste for volume and contrasts between light and shade; the south maintained the smooth, flat patterns of ancient times, but transposed them from the interior of buildings to an almost
ostentatious external application on their façades.
The XIX · XX Centuries
Ecleticism
With its more austere façades, the architecture of the XIX century took on the function of a supporting medium for a variety of figurative scenes.
The practise of filling the walls of simple buildings containing property for rent with mass-produced repetitive motifs did not preclude the creation of individual signed compositions. Amongst their authors, Luís Ferreira (1807-?) deserves special note. Known as "Ferreira das Tabuletas", he produced exuberant panels depicting vases of flowers, trees and
allegorical figures using the "trompe l'oeil" technique. His works, which he painted personally, were truly original and reflected the eclectic Romantic culture which marked Portuguese society in the second half of the XIX century.
Jorge Colaço (1868-1942) continued in this vein. He was originally an oil painter, but became known for the large-scale tile compositions he produced in Lisbon's Sacavém and Lusitânia Factories. His ceramic work prolonged the expression of what was an avowedly historicist taste - conceived in the late Romantic period with the intention of exalting characters and episodes of importance
to the identity of the motherland - right into the XX century.
The XX Century
From Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro
to Jorge Barradas
The taste for eclectic Revivalism and tile façades was to extend into the first three decades of the XX century.
Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1847-1905) experimented with the production of "Artistic Ceramics" at the Caldas da Rainha Faience Factory, where he also made Art Nouveau tiles.
The panel entitled "Lisbonne aux Mille Couleurs" (Lisbon of a Thousand Colours) by the painter Paolo Ferreira (1911-1999) was shown at the Portuguese Pavilion at the 1937
Paris International Exposition. It was displayed integrated within modern architecture, and reflected an openly modernist style.
However, it was Jorge Barradas (1894-1971) who was to be responsible for the great revival of Artistic Ceramics in Portugal and their transformation into a modern art form applicable to the architecture of the second half of the XX century.
He began his work - which was primarily centred on figurative stylisation and a sophisticated search for ceramic effects - in 1945 in the Viúva Lamego Factory, where he was to become a Master of Ceramics teaching a series of young artists
whose talent revealed itself in the post-war years.
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.
The XX Century
The 1950?s renewal:
the ceramists
Following on from the recovery of the ceramic art begun by Jorge Barradas, a number of young artists like Manuel Cargaleiro (b. 1927) became interested in painting tiles and in exploring the plasticity of clay and the unexpected qualities of other materials. The latter can be seen in the plaques which Querubim Lapa (b. 1925)
produced over a period of several decades beginning in the late 1950's. He applied visual thinking, which had already been employed in other forms of ceramics, to wall tiles. This technique was further developed by Cecília de Sousa (b. 1937) and Manuela Madureira (b. 1930), amongst others.
From 1958 onwards the painter Júio Resende (b. 1917) worked in articulation with a number of modern architectural projects to build up a significant ceramic activity in Oporto. His figurative compositions on tiles and ceramic plaques culminated in 1985 with an immense panel entitled "Ribeira Negra".
The XX Century
The major Lisbon
Underground projects
The Lisbon Underground has been responsible for the use of tiles on a monumental scale since the 1950's and is currently implementing the most extensive projects to once more use tiles in public spaces anywhere in Portugal at the moment. In 1987 it commissioned tiles with which to decorate its new stations from artists such as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992), Júlio Pomar (b. 1926), Manuel Cargaleiro (b. 1927), Sá Nogueira (b. 1921) and Eduardo Nery (b. 1938).
The stations on the Underground's new lines, which were inaugurated in the years leading up to
1998, are decorated with the work of both earlier artists like Júlio Resende (b. 1917), Querubim Lapa (b. 1925), Menez (1926-1995), Cecília de Sousa (b. 1937), Martins Correia (1910-1999) and Joaquim Rodrigo (1912-1997) and later ones such as Jorge Martins (b. 1940), Costa Pinheiro (b. 1932) and Graça Pereira Coutinho (b. 1944). An international flavour has also been introduced to the Portuguese tile in the shape of the work of Zao-Wo-Ki (1921-1998), Sean Scully (b. 1945) and Hundertwasser (b. 1928).
The XX Century
Other large public works Projects
The restoration of the eastern part of Lisbon in the
run-up to the last great World Exposition of the XX century - EXPO'98 - confirmed both the current relevance of the use of tiles and the continuing Portuguese taste for monumental ceramic coverings.
The immediate use of industrial tiles by Pedro Cabrita Reis (b. 1956) and Pedro Casqueiro (b. 1959) and the sensual presence of the ceramics in the figurative creations of Ilda David (b. 1955) and Fernanda Fragateiro (b. 1962) found an international echo in Ivan Chermaieff's work in the Oceanarium, where he combined a new use of the traditional standard-pattern mass-produced tile with a new technology - computers - to
portray large marine animals.
At the end of the display?
However, manual techniques have not been forgotten and we still find young artists who are interested in exploring them. Luís Camacho (b. 1956) draws symbols onto the glazed surface of tiles, while Bela Silva (b. 1966) has rediscovered the narrative and witty Portuguese traditional art of tile painting."
(Transcription of the National Azulejo Museum)
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