Drawings of Marques da Silva in the Laloux atelier, 1890-1896

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José Marques da Silva’s (1869-1947) pragmatism and skill made him one of the key architectural figures in early 20th century Porto. Constructed mostly in the north of Portugal, his work is eclectic and varied, though it retains evidence of Parisian influence and his internationalist ambition, aspects that would become fundamental to Porto’s physical appearance and to Portuguese architectural culture at the turn of the 20th century. This exhibition presents a core of archival drawings from the period of his training in Paris between 1889 and 1896, when he was a student at the École Nationale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts under the tutelage of Victor Laloux, the architect of the Gare d’Orsay.
In 1882 as a young man of 13, José Marques da Silva entered the Porto Academy of Fine Arts and, in 1896 after 14 years of academic study, returned to his native city with a degree in architecture from the French Government. The drawings exhibited here give us a glimpse of a now distant world while revealing aspects of the formative experiences of a young student of architecture. Though in many respects the profession remains the same, the experiences we witness are of a completely different nature to those of today.