By Shirley Farmer 
“Having lived in Paris since 1957, Manuel Cargallero has never made cosmopolitanism mean uprooting.”Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa noted in the memorandum published on the website of the Presidency of the Republic.
Cargalero was 97 years old and had lived in Paris since 1957.
The president also recalled “the memory of Pira Baixa's images and colors in his work, specifically the memory of patchwork blankets,” as well as “the artist's committed presence in the region of his birth, through the Foundation and the Cargallero Museum.” “.
“Mestre Cargalero, a ceramicist and painter, but also designer, engraver and sculptor, left his signature on churches, parks or metro stations, and on countless geometric and color pieces like those of other international artists who lived in Portugal.”
Although he had been outside the country for decades, the president also stressed that Mestre Cargaleiro “continued to feel, and we still feel, as a Portuguese artist.”
In 2017, Manuel Cargallero was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante D. Henrique, and in 2023, with the Grand Cross of the Order of Camões, by the President of the Republic. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa “now renews the greeting, his joyful and illuminating work, faithful to the past and the present, to our time which is also his.”
The President of the Republic concluded the note by stressing that he “will never forget the last meeting with Mestre Cargaleiro, a few weeks ago, in his home in Lisbon, where he continued to dream of projects for the future and believe in life, always paying the price.” Out of respect for Portugal.
The artist was born on March 16, 1927 in Chao das Servas, in the municipality of Vila Velha de Rodao, in the Castelo Branco district.
His work was strongly inspired by traditional Portuguese tiles. In 1949, he entered the Higher School of Art in Lisbon and participated in the first annual exhibition of ceramics, at the Palácio Foz, in Lisbon, where he held his first solo exhibition of ceramics, in 1952.
At the beginning of his career, in the 1950s, he received the Sebastião de Almeida National Prize for Ceramics, and the Diploma of Honor from the International Ceramics Academy, at the Cannes International Ceramics Festival, in France, at which time he began working as a professor of ceramics at the Antonio Arroyo School of Decorative Arts He presented his first oil paintings at the First Abstract Art Salon.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he participated in solo and group exhibitions, during which time he established himself not only as a renowned ceramicist, but also as a designer and painter. In the 1980s, he began to explore texture. From the 1990s onwards, blocky and chromatically intense patterns predominated in his work, in which he would continue to evoke Portuguese tiles.
In Castelo Branco, the Manuel Cargallero Foundation was opened in 1990, later expanding with the respective museum and later, in Seixal, Setubal district, the Manuel Cargallero Art Workshop.
Last year, exhibitions “Eu Sou… Cargaleiro” were held, at the Monastery of Enseide – the cultural center of Bayao, in the Porto area, and a painting exhibition at the Casa Teixeira López Museum – Galerias Diogo de Macedo, in Vila Nova de Gaia. , entitled “Cargaleiro, Pintar a Luz Viver a Cor”, and an inscription exhibition at the Ermesinde Cultural Forum, in Valongo, entitled “The Essence of Color”. This year he took works that had never been exhibited into his workshop in Seixal.
In Paris in 2019, the potter received the Order of Cultural Merit from the Portuguese government, and the Grand Vermeil Medal, the highest award in the French capital, where he lived most of his life.
At that time, the extension of the Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau metro station was also inaugurated, with new works by Manuel Cargallero, having originally been designed by the Portuguese artist and fully decorated in 1995, including the “Paris-Lisbon” tile painting.
C/Lusa