Laura Costa — A Bela Adomecida [The Sleeping Beauty]
In her youth, Laura Olinda Alves Costa (Porto, 1910-1993) was a friend and partner of emerging artists and frequented the avant-garde gatherings and darings of her time, denying the academicism of Porto's artistic establishment. At the end of the 1920s and during the following decade, we find the best of his illustrated work, in fiction for children and in school textbooks, at odds with the prevailing pictorial and ethnographic academicism. Her favourite themes, children and traditional customs, and the abundance of illustrations linked to Catholic worship, seem to condemn her to the status of propagandist for the Estado Novo. But the sensuality of his drawing differs from the stylised decorativism of the illustrators esteemed by António Ferro's Politics of the Spirit and reveals a strong sexualised image that the puritanical Estado Novo could not tolerate. The descriptive register in fine lines, without shadows or volume, becomes a trademark and will make a lasting impression on the memory of several generations, especially since Editorial Infantil Majora, in board games, colouring cards, book collections, and O Primeiro de Janeiro with the first pages dedicated to Christmas and São João. Traditional Portuguese costume contaminates all her graphic work. The representation of the Portuguese rural world, which has always been equivocal in the history of Portuguese visual arts, has an alternative design in Laura. Laura weaves an inventory of arts and customs, colours and materials, with a view to their fixation, preservation and capacity for workshop replication. Laura Costa, the Sleeping Beauty who was unable or unwilling to follow the frenzy of the aesthetic avant-garde from her student days onwards, has a unique path in the history of Portuguese illustration, full of mysteries and misunderstandings. He will build a graphic world of his own, an ivory tower where he will shut himself away until the end of his days.
Casa do Design website
Project and Graphic Design
Jorge Silva
Texts
Jorge Silva
Alexandre Alves Costa
Editorial review
Leonardo De Sá
Review
Helena Soares
Translation [bilingual edition PT ENG]
Kennis Translations
240x330 mm
240 pages
Paperback
PT / EN
9789898980274
2023
