Abílio de Mattos e Silva by Eunice Azevedo Tudela

The ninth volume of this collection is dedicated to Abílio de Mattos e Silva (1908-1985), an artist whose work spanned more than five decades and in arts as diverse as painting, set design, costume design, illustration, graphic design, tapestry and even poetry, which is still unpublished. It was the facet of the set and costume designer that we wanted to explore, but it wasn’t easy for Eunice Tudela de Azevedo to separate it from the others that she practiced with equal regularity and artistic level.
This book is an extensive approach to Mattos e Silva’s work, because it follows his career and production chronologically, listing and presenting a list of his 142 known creations for theater, dance and opera. However, it also contains an intensive study of the main scenographic pieces and costumes through a detailed, insightful and informed analysis of visual and written documents that the author has researched and brought to our attention. From the artist who conceives and invents to the artist who molds his idea to the collective project and the contingencies of the production, comes the (almost) finished portrait of one of the set designers who, during the Estado Novo and after April 25, fed the theatrical imagination on our main stages through the plastic component of the shows.