The Stronghold 1907 - 1917

In Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso's painting, titled 'The Stronghold,' the cool blues and greens feel so fresh they could have been mixed yesterday. You can almost feel Souza-Cardoso shifting things around, wiping away and re-drawing the forms of his imagined landscape – a series of turrets, arches, and cone-shaped trees. There's a wonderful push and pull between abstraction and representation, flatness and depth. I bet he was thinking about cubism but also wanted to do something else entirely! Look at that curved grey line – is it defining an archway or just a shape? The artist is playing with edges and forms, keeping everything in a state of delightful ambiguity. It reminds me of Léger, but softer, somehow more dreamy and less about machines. This painting is a reminder that artists are always in conversation, riffing on each other's ideas and pushing painting in new directions. It's about feeling and seeing at the same time, and letting go of needing everything to make perfect sense.