Garcez da Silva

Poet, visual artist, and publicist. He studied accounting and would have professionalized in that field. In 1935, as part of the Neo-Realist Group of Vila Franca de Xira, he co-founded the literary page of Mensageiro do Ribatejo and collaborated with the weekly newspaper O Diabo and the magazines Pensamento (1938-1940) and Vértice (II Série). Committed to literature and visual arts, he participated in collective exhibitions, displaying watercolors and drawings in Alhandra and Alenquer. He collaborated in organizing exhibitions at the Vila Franca de Xira Library-Museum and wrote prefaces for some of its catalogs. A great scholar of Alves Redol's work, his essay Alves Redol e o Grupo Neo-Realista de Vila Franca (1990) stands out, about which António Pedro Pita says that «some of the most interesting aspects [...] are the exhaustive survey of completely forgotten texts, the irresistibly autobiographical evocation of certain figures and circumstances, and, finally, the confirmation that the internal polemic of neo-realism outlives the literary validity of the movement itself. It serves as an excellent starting point for reigniting a discussion about neo-realism – especially since, by unraveling the thread of his own memory, Garcez da Silva made the debate about the theoretical assumptions and political conditions under which a certain artistic practice was inscribed (even) more imperative.» He has articles, chronicles, and short stories published in various newspapers, and he collaborated assiduously on the «Cultura e Arte» page of the newspaper O Comércio do Porto between 1963 and 1974. He published «O Ribatejo na Pintura de Silva Porto» in the Bulletin of the Vila Franca de Xira Library-Museum and, in 1972, signed the article «Pintura» in the Dicionário de Eça de Queiroz, organized and coordinated by A. Campos Matos in 1986.