Study A 1913

Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s painting is a pastel puzzle of pointy and round shapes, and it feels as though it was made with love and attention. I imagine him, brush in hand, maybe whistling, trying out the way the green sits next to the triangles—layering, adjusting, always searching. It’s like he's having a conversation with the painting itself, a back and forth with the canvas until it gives him what he wants. The surface is quite stippled, scrubby and bubbly, creating a lively, almost vibrating effect with its mosaic texture. It looks like he’s taken elements from Cubism, Futurism, and maybe even a touch of early abstraction to arrive at his own unique kind of language. You can feel the influence of other artists who were pushing the boundaries of what painting could be. But this piece has its own flavour. Painters are always in conversation, building upon what came before, riffing on each other’s ideas, trying to make something new. And in this painting, I see Souza-Cardoso doing just that—speaking his own mind in a way that only paint can.