Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (21 March 1846 – 23 January 1905; spelled Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro in older

Portuguese orthography Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis w ...

) was a

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

artist known for his illustration,

caricature A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, a ...

s, sculpture, and ceramics designs. Bordalo Pinheiro created the popular

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

character Zé Povinho (1875) and is considered the first Portuguese

comics creator developed specialized terminology. Some several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is un ...

Life

Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro was a disciple of his father, the painter Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro. His mother was Donna Maria Augusta do Ó Carvalho Prostes and his brother the painter

Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (Almada, 21 November 1857 – Lisbon, 6 November 1929), who is usually referred to as Columbano, was a Portuguese Realist painter. Usually considered the greatest Portuguese painter of the 19th century, he has been c ...

. He started publishing illustrations and political caricatures in humoristic magazines such as ''A Berlinda'' and ''O Calcanhar de Aquiles'' (the first satirical cartoon pamphlet in Portugal), frequently demonstrating a sarcastic humour with a political or social message. In 1875, he travelled to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

to work as an illustrator and cartoonist for the publication ''Mosquito'' (and later, another publication called ''O Besouro''), which was also employing the Italian/Brazilian illustrator Angelo Agostini, until then the unrivaled cartooning authority of Brazil. Pinheiro eventually became editor of other humorous, politically critical magazines. His fame as a caricaturist led the ''Illustrated London News'' to become one of his collaborators. He married Elvira Ferreira de Almeida in 1866 and the following year his son Manuel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro was born. In 1881, he published the illustrated reportage ''No Lazareto de Lisboa'' ("The Lazaretto of Lisbon") that included personal thoughts and anecdotes (not unlike a

Joe Sacco Joe Sacco (; born October 2, 1960) is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books ''Palestine'' (1996) and '' Footnotes in Gaza'' (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian relati ...

Guy Delisle Guy Delisle (born January 19, 1966) is a Canadian cartoonist and animator, best known for his graphic novels about his travels, such as ''Shenzhen'' (2000), '' Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea'' (2003), ''Burma Chronicles'' (2007), and ''Jerusa ...

chronicle), and is considered an early example of

autobiographical comics An autobiographical comic (also autobio, graphic memoir, or autobiocomic) is an autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comix movement and has since become more widespread. It i ...

.Marcos Farrajota
"Desassossego"
(reprinting his article of introduction to Portuguese comics for ''Š!'' magazine, including one page from Bordalo Pinheiro's ''Lazareto de Lisboa'') Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro died on 23 January 1905 in

Chiado The Chiado () is a neighborhood in the historic center of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Chiado is an important cultural and commercial district, known for its luxury shopping, historic landmarks, and its numerous theatres and museums. In 1988, ...

, Lisbon. He had a Catholic funeral, which was attended by several dozen people, including prominent politicians.

''Zé Povinho'' and comics

In 1875, Bordalo Pinheiro created the

character Zé Povinho (literal translation: "Joe Little People"), a Portuguese

everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...

, portrayed as a poor peasant. He became first a symbol of the Portuguese farming poor, and eventually into the unofficial

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. In ''Zé Povinho'', as in his other works, Bordalo Pinheiro's drawing style was innovative and influential, making extensive use of

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

, graphical signs (such as those used to represent movement), strong images (the ''manguito''), and his unique style of mixing punctuation marks, such as brackets, with drawing.

Pottery

In 1885, he founded a

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

factory in

Caldas da Rainha Caldas da Rainha () is a medium-sized Portuguese city in the Oeste region, in the historical province of Estremadura, and in the district of Leiria. The city serves as the seat of the larger municipality of the same name and of the Comunidad ...

, where he created many of the pottery designs for which this city is known. Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro was responsible for the technical and artistic aspects and his brother Feliciano Bordallo Pinheiro was in charge of the organizational aspects of the factory. He developed pieces of great technical, artistic and creative quality, painted tiles (

azulejos ''Azulejo'' (, ; from the Arabic ''al- zillīj'', ) is a form of Spanish and Portuguese painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework. ''Azulejos'' are found on the interior and exterior of churches, palaces, ordinary houses, schools, and nowadays, rest ...

), panels, pots, table centerpieces, vase busts, fountain basins, pitchers, plates, perfume bottles, vases and gigantic animals, etc., which in his hands quickly acquired an original character. The factory is still in business. Bordalo Pinheiro was devoted to the production of ceramic pieces

Legacy

The Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro Museum in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

is dedicated to his life and works.

Sources

Pinheiro, Bordalo (1846 - 1905)
Encyclopaedia Itaú Cultural ;Notes

External links

Lambiek Comiclopedia Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum, ), though since 2007, his son Boris Kousemaker is the current owner. From 1968 to 2015, it was located ...

Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro biography
on Bordallo Pinheiro {{DEFAULTSORT:Bordalo Pinheiro, Rafael 1846 births 1905 deaths Portuguese comics artists Portuguese artists Portuguese illustrators Portuguese potters Portuguese caricaturists People from Lisbon People from Caldas da Rainha