Manuel Cargaleiro Biography
Manuel Cargaleiro was born in 1927 in Portugal and began working with ceramics and painting from a young age. He taught himself and became a master in the creation of ceramic tiles, Azulejo, a very important art practiced in Portugal, imported by the Arabs to the Iberian peninsula. Starting in the 1950s, the painter moved to France, where he met the artists of the Ecole de Paris and whose country would become his second homeland. Cargaleiro is oriented towards the Parisian avant-garde and develops an art based on a continuous exchange between ceramics and painting. His compositions are based on geometric modules and a range of primary colors rich in shades that suggest movement in space. His graphic work, lithographs, engravings or serigraphs, are the expression of intimate and private values while mural ceramics have a social value. Cargaleiro will receive several public orders, in France in particular, from the Ministry of Culture, in Italy and in Portugal. In the 1990s, in particular, he created large walls for the Champs-Elysées Clémenceau metro station in Paris and worked for the Vietri museum in Italy.
Recognized and honored both in France and in his native country, in 2004 he inaugurated the Manuel Cargaleiro Foundation-Museum, Museum of Vietri, where he donated many of his works, becoming an important place of presentation and comparison for many international artists from the world of ceramic.
