José Sobral de Almada Negreiros (São Tomé e Príncipe, Trindade

Trindade

-Transportation:Trindade are linked with São Tomé and Príncipe's only highways linking to the capital city of São Tomé, another linking Neves and Santana and another linking to Guadalupe as well....

, Roça Saudade, April 7, 1893 - Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Hospital de São Luís dos Franceses, June 15, 1970) was a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. He was born in the then colony of São Tomé e Príncipe, the son of a Portuguese father, António Lobo de Almada Negreiros

António Lobo de Almada Negreiros

António Lobo de Almada Negreiros , was an illustrious journalist and colonialist writer, essayist and poet....

, and a Santomean mother, Elvira Freire Sobral. Besides literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 and painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, Almada developed ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 choreographies

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

, and worked on tapestry

Tapestry

Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...

, engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

, mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

s, caricature

Caricature

A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

, mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

, azulejo

Azulejo

Azulejo from the Arabic word Zellige زليج is a form of Portuguese or Spanish painted, tin-glazed, ceramic tilework. They have become a typical aspect of Portuguese culture, having been produced without interruption for five centuries...

 and stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

.

Life and Work

His mother died in 1896. In 1900 he enters in a jesuit boarding school

Boarding school

A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...

 in Campolide

Campolide

Campolide is a Portuguese civil parish in the municipality of Lisbon. It was created on February 7, 1959.Campolide was the site of a major battle on 5 September 1833, when the forces of Dom Miguel attacked those of Dom Pedro, as Pedro attempted to wrest back control of Portugal from his...

, Lisbon. After the October 1910 republican revolution

5 October 1910 revolution

The revolution of 1910 was a republican coup d'état that occurred in Portugal on 5 October 1910, which deposed King Manuel II and established the Portuguese First Republic....

 this school is closed and Almada enters the Escola Internacional, also in Lisbon.

In 1913 he made his first individual exhibition, showing 90 drawings. In 1915, along with Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...

 and Mário de Sá-Carneiro

Mário de Sá-Carneiro

Mário de Sá-Carneiro was a Portuguese poet and writer. He is one of the most well known of the "Geração D'Orpheu".-Life:...

, publishes poems and texts in the Orpheu

Geração de Orpheu

The Geração de Orpheu or Grupo de Orfeu refers to a group of men largely responsible for the introduction of Modernism to the arts and letters of Portugal through the vehicle of their tri-monthly publication, Orpheu ....

 artistic magazine, which would introduce modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 literature and art in Portugal. This same year Almada Negreiros writes the famous Manifesto Anti-Dantas

Júlio Dantas

Júlio Dantas, GCC was a Portuguese doctor, poet, journalist, politician, diplomat and dramatist.-Biography:...

 e por extenso, a humorous attack against a more traditionalist and bourgeois older generation. In 1915 the artist also conceives the O Sonho da Rosa ballet.

In 1917, with the scope of introducing to the Portuguese public the Futuristic

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...

 aesthetics, Almada Negreiros publishes, together with Santa-Rita Pintor, the Portugal Futurista magazine, writing the Ultimatum Futurista, às gerações portuguezas do século XX ("Futurist ultimatum to the Portuguese generations of the 20th century"). He promotes a conference, the Sessão Futurista ("Futurist Session"), where he appears wearing a kind of boiler-suit.

Between the years 1918-20 Almada lives in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. To support himself, he works as a dancer and as a factory worker. In 1920 he returns to Lisbon. In 1925 he produces two paintings for one of the most famous cafés in Lisbon, A Brasileira

A Brasileira

The Café A Brasileira is one of the oldest and most famous cafés in the old quarter of Lisbon, in the civil parish of Sacramento. Located at 120 Rua Garrett, at one end of the Largo do Chiado , in the district of the same name, near the Baixa-Chiado metro stop and close to the University, ensuring...

. In 1927 he goes to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 where he writes in several Spanish publications like Cronica and La Farsa. He writes El Uno, tragédia de la Unidad.

Back in Portugal, in the following years his artistic production will be wide and prolific as he becomes a key artist in Portuguese modern art, influenced by Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 and, mainly, by Futurism. His role, during António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...

's authoritarian regime is however ambiguous, assuming both as an "aligned" artist (doing public mural paintings or propaganda posters) and a provocative critic of Portuguese society of the time.

In 1934 he married painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 Sarah Afonso (May 13, 1899 – December 14, 1983). Re-settled for good in Portugal, he would continue in his role as "artistic agitator" within the oppressed society that was Portugal until the time of his death. In 1934 the couple had their only son, José Afonso de Almada Negreiros.

He was also, even if sparely, an actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and a dancer although that shows his compreehension that all forms of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 are intimately linked.

Painting and visual arts

Almada Negreiros always called himself a futurist artist, inspired by
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...

 and other modern artists, however his style is wider, and its hardly defined into a category.
Adding to this modern approach his works also reveals a decorative and arabesque richness and sometimes a geometrical abstraction.
His public art is often political engaged as mural of "Gare Maritima de Alcantara" shows, however, many of his paintings and drawings show common people in daily affairs or attitudes usual in socialist art.
His work as visual artist extends to tapestry, printmaking, theater and ballet scenography.

Novels and writings

An important part of his artistic production is literary. He wrote novels, poems, playwrights, essays and manifests that were, in his lifetime, published in books, magazines, newspapers or even low cost booklets and flyers.
In his novels and playwrights there is a description of daily affair of people besides a sense of the absurd and non-sense that can be related (preceding them) with writers like Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

 or Arthur Adamov

Arthur Adamov

Arthur Adamov was a playwright, one of the foremost exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd.Adamov was born in Kislovodsk in Russia to a wealthy Armenian family, which lost its wealth in 1917...

. His literary work is highy evolved with his artistic view, often visual and "geometric" in his descriptions and backgrounds.
His manifests were highly provocative, like "Manifesto Anti-Dantas", a humorous and aggressive text against Júlio Dantas

Júlio Dantas

Júlio Dantas, GCC was a Portuguese doctor, poet, journalist, politician, diplomat and dramatist.-Biography:...

, a major figure of arts and culture of Salazar's regime which stands as a banner against mediocrity and conformism.
He also wrote essays on the theory of colours, the Portuguese antique painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, geometry

Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

and gave numerous conferences on cultural matters.

Literary works

• O Moinho (1913)
• Os Outros (1914)
• 23, 2º Andar (1914)
• Frizos, published in Orpheu vol. 1, pp. 51–59 (prose) (1915)
• A Cena do Ódio (poetry) (1915)
• Manifesto Anti-Dantas e por extenso (1915)
• Litoral (1915)
• A Engomadeira (novel) (1915, published in 1917)
• Ultimatum Futurista, às gerações portuguezas do século XX (conference) (1917)
• K4, O Quadrado Azul (novel) (1917)
• Saltimbancos Contrastes Simultâneos (1917)
• A Invenção do Corpo (conference) (1921)
• O Cágado (1921)
• A Invenção do Dia Claro (1921)
• Histoire du Portugal par coeur (1922)
• Pierrot e Arlequim (theatre) (1924)
• Nome de Guerra (novel) (1925, published in 1938)
• A Questão dos Painéis (essay) (1926)
• El uno, tragedia de la unidad (composed of Deseja-se Mulher and S.O.S) (1928)
• Portugal, Direcção Única (1932)
• Elogio da Ingenuidade ou as Desventuras da Esperteza Saloia (1936)
• Mito-Alegoría-Símbolo, Monólogo autodidacta na oficina da pintura (1948)