Who was Mário Cesariny?
Poet, painter and fundamental reference of Portuguese surrealism, Mário Cesariny is regarded as one of the greatest voices of Portuguese poetry in the 20th century, and his work as an anthologist, compiler and historian, somewhat controversial, of surrealist activities in Portugal is also noteworthy.
1. Life at home was not easy.
Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos was born on 9 August 1923 in Vila Edith, on Estrada da Damaia. His father, Viriato de Vasconcelos, was a goldsmith (with a workshop on Rua da Palma) and his mother, María de las Mercedes Cesariny, was a Parisian (of Spanish descent) and a French teacher. From childhood,Mário Cesariny he remembered that life at home was not easy. The marriage between his parents had not been happy and the arguments were recurrent. The image that was forever etched in the head of Mário Cesariny it was the father on one side, “threatening everything and anything else,” and the mother on the other, with her four children huddled behind her.
2. Be surreal
Surrealism met Mário Cesariny “around 1945 or 1946”, when Alexandre O'Neill and the Portuguese artist discovered a book History of Surrealism, by Maurice Nadeau, which the censorship of the borders had missed. It was through the words of this book that they made the decision to become surrealists, as the artistic current “represented the total realization of our state of mind, the defense of love, freedom and poetry”. “Unlike many, Cesariny became a surrealist due to the fact that the movement's guidelines were the form of its coincidence. “The desperate fight for love, freedom and poetry. It seems that it is a trinity that comes to replace Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Liberty, Love, Poetry – it is living it. It's a bit complicated, isn't it?”, he asked in an interview with Público, in 2002.
3. Poetry and painting have always gone hand in hand with Mário Cesariny
Mário Cesariny wrote, had been painting and drawing regularly since the age of 19 and always in exactly that order. Poetry came first and only later came painting, which would eventually invade his world. He published his first book, Corpo Visível, in 1950, a year after forming “Os Surrealistas”. Other publications followed, before the 25th of April — Discourse on the Rehabilitation of the Daily Real (1952), Louvor e Simplificação by Álvaro de Campos (1953), Manual de Prestidigitação (1956) and one of the best, Pena Capital (1957) ), between others.
4. The pictorial work of Mário Cesariny does not fit the normal term of painting
The pictorial work of Mário Cesariny it does not fit the normative idea of painting. His pieces have a very specific characteristic, being like object-poems”, as they are composed essentially of collage, poems and objects. Mário Cesariny he wrote, painted and drew because all his artistic production was interconnected. The Portuguese artist often participates in poems to create drawings, and in a drawing to create a poem, always being a circular work. Always recognized as a great poet, Mário Cesariny he did not always receive the recognition he deserved as a plastic artist due to the problems he had with the first surrealist group.
5. Loved the cafe life
These books were all written at coffee tables, as the Portuguese artist was so fond of. During your whole life, Mário Cesariny he boasted that he never wrote a line at home. He knew all the poems by heart, which he was constructing inside his head as he crossed the streets of Lisbon and which he would only later put on paper. “Coffees that summed up their understanding of life. Café-madhouse, café-deck, café-asylum, café-office, café-almost lounge and, of course!, café-de-coupling.” But, despite being addicted to coffee, “I would ask for mineral water.” wrote his friend José Manuel dos Santos in an article published in the Público newspaper in December 2006.
6. Was detained by the PIDE several times
Despite the transgressive character of his poems, Mário Cesariny he was lucky enough to never see his books seized by the censors. Books could go unnoticed but Mário Cesariny it didn't pass. Before the end of the dictatorship, he was detained on several occasions on suspicion of vagrancy, “a term that applied to people that were a little weird” — anarchists, seers, blasphemers and rebels and homosexuals. Despite being frequently detained by the police, the artist always returned to his old life.
7. Miguel Gonçalves Mendes made the documentary Autografia about Mário Cesariny
It is from the last years of life that most of the interviews with Mário Cesariny. Always oblivious to the limelight, Mário Cesariny he gladly accepted the attention given to him in the last years of his life. In 2004, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes made the documentary Autografia, where the poet and painter exhibited himself, at the same time that the Museum of the City of Lisbon exhibited a retrospective of his work.
