Ética e estética e tudo o mais

Our presentation aims to reflect the importance of “brutalism” in the work of Portuguese architect Pancho (Amâncio) Guedes (Lisbon, 1925), in Mozambique, between the early 1950s until 1975, the moment when the process of decolonization of the so-called “Portuguese Africa” occurs. Graduated in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the University of Witwatersrand, Pancho has contact from early on with the English panorama, then with a growing dynamism. He meets the couple Alison and Peter Smithson in 1960, via Theo Crosby, then editor in Architectural Design, who would take him to participate in the Team 10 meetings, presenting his work in Royaumont, in 1962, and afterwards in several gatherings of that particular context. In the end of the 1960s, the Smithsons couple would respond to the participation of Pancho, visiting his work in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). From those connections, Pancho has the opportunity to breathe first-hand the “air of times”, combining a geographically marginal experience – and eccentric in absolute terms –, with the most advanced discussion of the period, where an evident “brutalist connexion” is included. Our presentation intends to divulge and emphasize that connection, reflecting in his whole oeuvre the elements that are most approximated to the ethic vs. aesthetic dichotomy inherent to brutalism, retrieving the discussion proposed by Reyner Banham. Moreover, his work is celebrated early on, as we can see in its publication in Architectural Review in 1961 th and his participation in the 6 S. Paulo Biennale, in the Museum of Modern Art. In 1962, magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui publishes a number dedicated to the “Architectures visionnaires”, with the inclusion of several of Pancho’s projects, between works of Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright, Yona Friedman, and others. In this visionary context, the work of Pancho gains a particular likelihood, and its brutalist affection emerges also as a presupposition of need for those who builds in quantity and quality in a context that requires a large degree of pragmatism. In the free gestuality of his architecture we consistently find “brutalist” strategies and connexions, inextricably combined with painting and sculpture. In Paris, in 1960, Pancho Guedes says: “I buy all that’s published on Dubuffet”.