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U.Porto Memory

Building in Largo do Professor Abel Salazar

Biographical notes on the sculptor João da Silva (1880-1960)

“(…) Distinctive by the purity of his neoclassical art, of burning harmony and grace. With powerful technic, he knows to unveil the secret charm of things and beings.”
(PAMPLONA, Fernando)

João da Silva was born in Lisbon on 1 December 1880.

In the beggining of his career he worked as an aprentice of chiseler and jeweler in Casa Leitão & Irmão (c.1893), while studying in the School Afonso Domingues. Later he also atended the Industrial School Príncipe Real.

At the turn of the century he continued his studies abroad, in the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva, where he took a chieselling course and in the School of Fine Arts of Paris, where he took a degree on Scupltura and medal-making.

Back to Portugal (1906) he worked as sculpture, goldsmith, medalist and teacher of Applied Arts in the School Marquês do Pombal (1911-1914). He was chosen to teach Drawing and Modelage, but he preferred to return to Paris, until 1932.

Although his definitive return to the country, he continued to make constant work visits to the french capital.

As a sculptor, he distinguished himself as a medalist, but he also dedicated time to the study of animals. Quite memorable are the first golden republic coin (1916) and the commemorative medal of the first centenary of the birth of Silva Porto (1950), ordered by the Guild of Goldsmiths of Northern Portugal.

Among his vast sculpture works, some are quite noteworthy: the Bust of the Republic, carved for the Constituent Assembly and inaugurated in the Parliament in 1911 (later, this bust disappeared), several monuments to the dead of the First World War (Évora – 1933 and Valença do Minho - 1951, for example), and the monument in memory of the children who died in the 1914-1918 war, produced one year after it ended and intended for the French municipality of Pouliguen. João da Silva also produced the monuments in honour of Augusto Gil (1935) for the city of Guarda, and of the Baron of Rio Branco, for Rio de Janeiro, the Fons Vitae for the Luso Thermal Waters and the Fonte da Juventude for the Portuguese Pavilion in the Seville Exhibition in 1929.

He was also the author of the silver epitaph dedicated to General Don José Henrique Varela Iglésias, in the cemetery of Toledo, the silver quill and inkstand offered to Afonso Costa, the Floreira duas Pátrias offered to the Brazilian President, Hermes da Fonseca, when he visited Portugal in 1912, and the sculpture representing the winner of the prize A mais bela mulher de França [The most beautiful woman in France], established by the French newspaper e Monde.

For the University of Porto he produced a bronze medal to commemorate the First Centenary of the Royal School of Surgery (1825-1925), the monument to Júlio Dinis commissioned by the Faculty of Medicine in 1923 and inaugurated in 1926 (through public subscription; the bust of Alfredo Magalhães, inaugurated in the Faculty of Medicine in 1926; the medal of the First Centenary of the Medical-Surgical School of Porto (1836-1936) and the Polytechnic Academy of Porto (1837-1937) in 1938; the monument in memory of the students of the University of Porto who died in the 1914-1918 war, known as The Saint or The Wisdom (inaugurated 1948, in the entrance hall of the building which houses the Rectory of the University of Porto), the medal of the opening of the Hospital Oporto School (1959) and the post-mortem mask of Abel Salazar (1946).

His last work was the evocative medal of Prince Henry. He made the reverse but the obverse was finished by Vasco da Conceição (1914-1992).

João da Silva participated and was awarded in several national and international exhibitions, for exemple he won the 1st prize ex-aequo with René Lalique (1860-1945) in the Rio de Janeiro Exhibition, in 1908, and an honorable mention in the Paris Salon of 1908, and was distinguished with the Soares dos Reis Award by the National Secretariat of Information (SNI) in 1949, which he declined.

In 1933 he was elected member of the National Academy of Fine Arts (1933) and in 1952 he, and his second wife Maria do Pilar Sérgio da Silva (pianis), donated to the National Society of Fine Arts his house-workshop (now House-Museum Master João da Silva) built by R. Fildier and P. Meige, following his guidelines.

He published the essay Canon das Estátuas Esquestres (1941).

He was the father of Gabriela Silva (who died in 2003) and Ruy Ribeiro da Silva (who died in 1965).

This republican and free-mason (initiated as Cellini in 1910, in loja José Estêvão) died in his home, on 6 March 1960, and was buried in Prazeres Cemetery, in Lisbon.

By his death he was substituted in National Academy of Fine Arts first by Henrique Medina and later by Júlio Resende.

In 1980 the centenary of his death was evoked in the National Academy of Fine Arts.
Universidade do Porto Digital / Gestão de Documentação e Informação, 2018.