Word clippings and painted stories — interchange between the pictorial and the literary in Almada Negreiros

Abstract

Many authors have recognized the visual character of the writings by the Portuguese artist Almada Negreiros (1893-1970), but the multiple variations and interpretations that can be driven from that are yet to be explored. In this article I intend to make some of those interpretations about the in­terchange between the pictorial and the literary that occur in his work, emphasizing precisely the inter­change, that is, not noticing merely how he creates strong literary images — which has been the focus of the literary studies — but understanding that Almada’s writing thrives from a notion of avant-garde based on the primacy of vision and that his practice and theory about the pictorial are determinant for his writing. On another hand, I will also consider how his painting often revisits his literary work. More than a dialogue between two art forms, the pictorial and the literary in Almada Negreiros are profoundly interconnected and constitute an example of the inventiveness that resulted from the rupture of the fron­tiers between the arts operated by the avant-garde from the early twentieth century.