This book, which I coordinated the contents and editing, is the result of the international colloquium held in 2014 by the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, with the support of the Lisbon and Sintra City Councils, and close articulation with the Directorate General for Architectural Heritage.
The happy title, suggested by Professor José Monterroso Teixeira, well expresses the time in which Norte Júnior lived and worked, between the beginning of the 20th century and its middle. Eclecticism, as an aesthetic current, then corresponded, in architecture, to the open and diversified use of the various styles that Romanticism and Historicism created, evolving from Classicism to Art Nouveau.
And Norte Júnior was the exponent of this practice and this understanding of architecture in Portugal, along with the exceptional Ventura Terra (with this one in the first two decades of the 19th century).
The architecture of Norte Júnior intensely reflected the taste for the decorative arts, for the ornamental profusion, in the search for the richness of sculptural and pictorial elements – throughout a time when such a vision of Fine Arts was gradually purified and abandoned, in favor of the nascent architecture modernist.
But Norte Júnior also practiced this, in the most recent phases of its work, innovating in the technological and constructive aspects – and thus accentuating its importance in a long time of the evolution of architecture in Portugal.
An unjustly forgotten author, or little recognized and studied, it is hoped that this gap will be overcome with this work; in addition to the printed book with the communications given at the aforementioned colloquium, the DGPC created a “Thematic Inventory” available on its website, dedicated to the work of Norte Júnior, which was another useful and qualified result of the event, and will be presented in the launch now scheduled.
Jose Manuel Fernandes
17-2-2023
Speakers:
- Deolinda Folgado
- Fernando Martins
- Joao Carlos Santos
- John Rodeia
- João Correia
- Jose Manuel Fernandes
- Jose Monterroso Teixeira
- Jorge Ferreira