Texto escrito por Jose I. Duarte sobre as telas de Júlio Pomar alusivas aos Emigrantes de Ferreira de Castro; Titulo DREAMS OF FORTUNE - Macau Closer Magazine ; Dezembro de 2014 em http://macaucloser.com/magazine/dreams-fortune

Emotive depictions of the struggles of emigrants to South America in the early 20th century A recent exhibition of Portuguese paintings at the Military Club presented emotive depictions of the struggles of emigrants to South America in the early 20th century The year was 1911 and a young, poor Portuguese boy, José Maria, boarded a ship headed to Brazil. Not yet in his teens, like so many of those like him, he was going to try his luck at the rubber plantations in the Amazon River basin. There, in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, some made mythical fortunes while many lost their hopes, if not more. José Maria Ferreira de Castro would not have an easy life during his early years in Brazil, where he stayed until 1919. From that experience he took and recreated many of the characters that would later dwell in his numerous books, the first of which was published when he was just 18. The troubled times living in the depths of a jungle plantation, followed by a succession of odd jobs and not a few periods of penury, gave him a unique understanding of the hardships faced by emigrants, and a lifelong warmth for those that the wheel of fortune leaves behind. Possibly nowhere is that more evident than in the novel he published in 1928, when he had already returned to his native Portugal and to a distinguished career as a journalist and a writer. Ferreira de Castro’s Emigrants, one of the most widely translated books by a Portuguese author, is a portrait of that world, told with a realism that anticipates later literary trends. In 1966 the book was republished as a special edition, celebrating his 50 years of literary activity. In a postface made especially for that edition, Ferreira de Castro states that it was in Brazil, among those whose dreams were possibly the only thing bigger than their misery, that he had learned to “love the human cause”, and was able to feel the “comforting poetry, secret and profound, which is to foresee each man beyond his steep life walk”. That especial edition was illustrated with 12 plates made by a Portuguese artist, Júlio Pomar. Like Castro before him, Pomar had at the time also become an emigrant. He has since lived most of the time in France, and together with Paula Rego and Vieira da Silva, also emigrants, is one of the most internationally acclaimed Portuguese contemporary artists. In those plates we can recognize the self-contained strength of Pomar’s brush strokes, in way that resonates with the hard life and the resilience of the emigrants that Castro evokes. Time would scatter the original oil on canvas paintings, but in a work of passion and patience, two private collectors from Portugal, themselves emigrants for most of their lives - spent more than ten years trying to trace their location and to bring together the twelve siblings. Two are still unaccounted for and are likely lost forever, however ten have been reunited. Two of them were recently on display in Macau, at the Military Club, as part of an exhibition bringing together a broad sample of contemporary Portuguese painting. The first work was also the cover of the book, depicting a guitar player with a sombrero. It could be anyone, suspended between two worlds, hiding his face while voicing on the strings of a guitar a yearning for a distant home. The second is the moment of departure, dealt in sharp and dark brush strokes. The sky is heavy and further dims the vanishing daylight. A couple, with rudimentary baggage, painted in somber tones, approaches a bus, in the distance. The bus forms are irregular, almost childlike strokes, hinting at an innocence being left behind. These are emigrants’ tales, threads of life that literature and art have brought together and to us.