O SOLAR DOS JORGES

Jorges Castle
A casa de Jorge Soares, Boavista
(Torres Vedras)

Fotografias de 11 Outubro 2012 (A.P.)

For as long as there is an available space, Jorge Soares will keep adding new
figures to the interior and exterior walls of the villa he bought in 1972 as a
vacation home, near Lisbon, where he was born, and close to Praia Azul
(Boavista, Silveira, Torres Vedras). After he retired and became widowed, in

the beginning of the new century, he began to devote

all of his time to creating azulejo decorations and
placing the objects he had since collected or rather
gathered and accumulated. He transformed every
faade of the old villa and provided the house and
roadside walls with a new skin; he created a labyrinth
in the garden and named the paths after close
relatives; he erected a tower and hoisted a flag,
engraved verses and opened a private museum. Every
exterior and interior surface of the house has been
invaded by a proliferating, chaotic and often parodic
figuration, made from a wide diversity of materials,
techniques and inspirations, always with rudimentary
resources. A personal world was created, an
encyclopedic puzzle; the work of a master of the broken tile who is first and
foremost a humorist.
Boavista's Gaudi, as he has been called, is a compulsive creator who, after a
lifetime of work that he himself celebrates as the career of a struggler, has
reinvented himself as an original artist who abides only by his own rules and
has no interest in the commercialization of his art. Jorge Soares is a self-taught,
singular, unique folk artist. A landscape builder who is as skilled in tile
composition and collage as he is surprising in the use of the objects he finds.
He operates in an ambiguous area where classifications of his work are more
reductionist and problematic than enlightening - the labels art brut or outsider
art do not apply to him: He does not repeat himself in
a formula, he does not illustrate the obsessive
reveries of a visionary, nor does he confine himself
to a secret and exclusive universe. He had a
successful personal and professional life, from
professional football to trading in beverages, and
only found the time and freedom for artistic creation
in his later years.
Using ceramic fragments and pebbles, he designs his
mural panels populated by guards that landmark and
defend his property, by the animals of his extensive
and amusing bestiary, by characters he relates to or
depicts imaginatively, (Saint George and the
Dragon, the nude warrior, the mermaids and the

skeletons, the effigies of the Republic). Dates, emblems and

symbolic representations signal the course of his life and
reinforce the presence of humour as the main trait of his
work. He was born in 1942, regards 1972 as
the beginning of the Solar dos Jorges, and
he intends to continue his work until 2042 :
the plan is carved in stone.
Jorge Soares works only for himself, by the
roadside, but he enjoys the public exposure
and the acclaim of visitors. Throughout the
film that followed him during nearly two
years, Jorge Soares leads the guided tour of
his work: the decorated villa and the
gardens populated by sculptures,
monuments and transformed objects. He
tells the story of his life, creates the
character, and invents or modifies further
figures; he comments on his art and works
patiently before the camera.
Directed by Tiago Pereira & Alexandre Pomar
Image and editing by Tiago Pereira