O Solar dos Jorges (Jorges Castle)

8/10/2019 O Solar dos Jorges (Jorges Castle)

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O SOLAR DOS JORGES

Jorges Castle

A casa de Jorge Soares, Boavista

(Torres Vedras)

Fotografias de 11 Outubro 2012 (A.P.)

For as long as there is an available space, Jorge Soares will keep adding new

figures to the interior and exterior walls of the villa he bought in 1972 as a

vacation home, near Lisbon, where he was born, and close to Praia Azul

(Boavista, Silveira, Torres Vedras). After he retired and became widowed, in


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the beginning of the new century, he began to devote

all of his time to creating azulejo decorations and

placing the objects he had since collected or rather

gathered and accumulated. He transformed every

faade of the old villa and provided the house androadside walls with a new skin; he created a labyrinth

in the garden and named the paths after close

relatives; he erected a tower and hoisted a flag,

engraved verses and opened a private museum. Every

exterior and interior surface of the house has been

invaded by a proliferating, chaotic and often parodic

figuration, made from a wide diversity of materials,

techniques and inspirations, always with rudimentary

resources. A personal world was created, an

encyclopedic puzzle; the work of a master of the broken tile who is first and

foremost a humorist.

Boavista's Gaudi, as he has been called, is a compulsive creator who, after a

lifetime of work that he himself celebrates as the career of a struggler, has

reinvented himself as an original artist who abides only by his own rules and

has no interest in the commercialization of his art. Jorge Soares is a self-taught,

singular, unique folk artist. A landscape builder who is as skilled in tilecomposition and collage as he is surprising in the use of the objects he finds.

He operates in an ambiguous area where classifications of his work are more

reductionist and problematic than enlightening - the labels art brut or outsider

art do not apply to him: He does not repeat himself in

a formula, he does not illustrate the obsessive

reveries of a visionary, nor does he confine himself

to a secret and exclusive universe. He had a

successful personal and professional life, from

professional football to trading in beverages, and

only found the time and freedom for artistic creation

in his later years.

Using ceramic fragments and pebbles, he designs his

mural panels populated by guards that landmark and

defend his property, by the animals of his extensive

and amusing bestiary, by characters he relates to or

depicts imaginatively, (Saint George and theDragon, the nude warrior, the mermaids and the


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skeletons, the effigies of the Republic). Dates, emblems and

symbolic representations signal the course of his life and

reinforce the presence of humour as the main trait of his

work. He was born in 1942, regards 1972 as

the beginning of the Solar dos Jorges, andhe intends to continue his work until 2042 :

the plan is carved in stone.

Jorge Soares works only for himself, by the

roadside, but he enjoys the public exposure

and the acclaim of visitors. Throughout the

film that followed him during nearly two

years, Jorge Soares leads the guided tour of

his work: the decorated villa and the

gardens populated by sculptures,

monuments and transformed objects. He

tells the story of his life, creates the

character, and invents or modifies further

figures; he comments on his art and works

patiently before the camera.

Directed by Tiago Pereira & Alexandre Pomar

Image and editing by Tiago Pereira


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O Solar dos Jorges (Jorges Castle)

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