Manuel Cargaleiro

Manuel Cargaleiro (Chão das Servas, March 16, 1927) is a Portuguese painter and ceramist. Born in the municipality of Vila Velha de Ródão (district of Castelo Branco), he lived for a long time in his youth on the south bank of the Tagus, in the municipalities of Almada and Seixal. In 1949 he participated in the first Ceramics Fair organized by (pt) António Ferro in Lisbon, and in 1952 he carried out the first individual ceramics exhibition organized by what was then the National Secretariat of Information (SNI ). He taught ceramics at the António Arroyo School of Decorative Arts, in Lisbon, and since 1994 there has been a Manuel Cargaleiro secondary school in Seixal (Fogueteiro) [1]. In 1957, he moved to Paris where he is permanently represented at the Galerie Albert Loeb but from the last quarter of the twentieth century, he went to work sometimes in France and sometimes in Lisbon and (pt) Monte de Caparica. He received the influence of artists from the School of Paris, such as Delaunay, Ernst, Vasarely and Klee. His compositions are based on geometric modules and primary colors, suggesting movement in space. On January 31, 1990, he created the Manuel Cargaleiro Foundation in Lisbon, to which he offered a large set of his works and a collection made up of objects of various themes. He has a workshop in (pt) the Veuve Lamego factory, in Sintra, and since 1999, in Vietri sul Mare (province of Salerno, Italy) where, in 2004, the Museo Artistico Industriale Manuel Cargaleiro [2] was inaugurated. There will be a museum dedicated to his work at (pt) Quinta da Fidalga in Seixal - (pt) Cargaleiro Museum. Since the 2000s, Cargaleiro has enriched his creation by collaborating with Didier Marien from the Boccara gallery on a series of artistic rugs.