JAIME ISIDORO: PROMOTER, COLLECTOR, ARTIST

Jaime Isidoro was born on March 21st, 1924 in the city of Porto to a humble family and was raised in a bleak and oppressive period in Portugal. Nevertheless, Jaime Isidoro, who was awakened to artistic practice as a child, made his life an extraordinary adventure, and the country probably owes him the creation of its art system. In 1954, after a short but recognized career as a painter and designer, he created the Galeria Alvarez in Porto, the oldest in the country still in operation. This was followed by initiatives at Casa da Carruagem (Valadares, Vila Nova de Gaia), the Artes Plásticas magazine, the International Art Meetings, the International Art Biennials and the Café des Arts, in addition to supporting the promotion of Portuguese modernist artists, for example by organising the first posthumous exhibition of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. He invested in and promoted a considerable number of artists who are now part of the history of Portuguese contemporary art, sponsoring the internationalisation of some of them. His role in promoting performance in Portugal is unique, as is the importance of the Galeria Alvarez in what is defined as the “Porto School” Jaime Isidoro dedicated 40 years to publicising the visual arts, contributed to the development of art collecting in Portugal and bequeathed us a collection of thousands of artworks, representative of national and international modern and contemporary art. He never stopped painting or being an artist. The aim of this documentary is to fairly reinscribe his importance to the history of Portuguese art from the second half of the 20th century onwards, while at the same time repositioning Porto and the north of the country as the driving force behind the introduction of the avant-garde and the bastions of Freedom. He died on January 21st, 2009, in the same Porto that saw him born, but his legacy makes him eternal.

The documentary features testimonies from Albuquerque Mendes, Alfredo Barreto, António Quadros Ferreira, Armando Alves, Augusto Canedo, Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, José Manuel Carpinteira, Daniel Isidoro, Helena Mendes Pereira, Henrique Silva, Júlio Gago, Laura Castro, Mário Cláudio, Silvestre Pestana, Álvaro Siza Vieira and Zulmiro de Carvalho.

Documentary credits:

Documentary, 2024, Portugal, 80 min, M/12

Promotion: Fundação Bienal de Arte de Cerveira

Directed by: Helena Mendes Pereira, LUAR Imagem

Produced by: LUAR Imagem