Guilherme de Santa-Rita was a Portuguese painter and writer. He was considered the introducer of Futurism in Portugal.
Background
Guilherme de Santa-Rita was born on October 31, 1889 in Lisbon, Portugal, into the family of Guilherme Augusto de Santa Rita and Palmira Cau da Costa. He also had two brothers: Augusto de Santa Rita, modernist writer, and Mario de Santa Rita, poet.
Education
Santa-Rita first attended the Academy of Fine Arts (now part of the University of Lisbon), and then he left for Paris as a state scholar in April 1910. In 1910 Guilherme received a scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, a position he lost due to his monarchical ideas and bad relations with the ambassador of Portugal João Chagas.
Career
Guilherme returned to Portugal in 1914, the year of the outbreak of World War 1. After return to Lisbon, he planned to publish the "Futurist Manifesto" by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in Portuguese, a task he never accomplished, despite the author's authorization. On June 14, 1915, he participated in an event where he, Almada Negreiros, José Pacheko, and Ruy Coelho were the promoters. Later that year he participated in the second issue of Revista Orpheu, where four of his works were reproduced.
Guilherme de Santa-Rita, as well as other artists, participated on April 4, 1917 in a "Matinee" to present futurism to the Portuguese public, at the Teatro República in Lisbon. Then he began to prepare an alternative journal that he could control. In November - December 1917, Santa-Rita prepared the launch of the Portugal Futurist Magazine, which was apprehended at the door of typography, by subversion and obscenity of some texts. Directed officially by Carlos Filipe Porfírio and having as nominal editor S. Ferreira, Portugal Futurista was, in fact, the work fully of Santa-Rita; it was he who orchestrated the whole process behind the scenes. Unfortunately, only one issue was published, and most of the copies were seized by the police due to alleged obscenity.
Without ever having exhibited in Portugal, with a work almost unknown to the public, Santa Rita died on April 29, 1918 as a tuberculosis victim, leaving express orders to the family so that all the works of his authorship would be destroyed. A few of his paintings survived in the hands of collectors and friends. They are now in possession of the Ministry of Culture and the Chiado Museum. Others were partially preserved as black and white illustrations in Portugal Futurista and Orpheu. With the death of Santa-Rita, the Portuguese Futurist movement declined, marking the end of the first phase of Portuguese modernism.
Views
Guilherme de Santa-Rita adhered to the artistic traditions of Futurism. He was also blamed for being a Monarchist.
Personality
Santa-Rita had a paradoxical personality and, according to Sá-Carneiro, "a fantastic type", "ultramonarchical", "intolerable", and "unbearably vain."
Physical Characteristics:
Guilherme de Santa-Rita had a signature mode of dressing: work clothes with striped rectangles.