The Real and the Imaginary: Memory and Identity in the Figurative Art of Barcelos

“Whatever its historical basis, the culture of a people is always, to varying degrees, the effective and symbolic overcoming of its particularity.” Eduardo Lourenço – Nós e a Europa ou as Duas Razões.

Figurado is the name given to the work produced by artisans who are dedicated to modeling pieces by hand, which essentially represent the reality or imagination of their daily lives.

Experts distinguish between two types of Figurative Art: assortment and statuary. Figurative Statuary (or simply Figurative Art) is the name given to pieces of statuary of popular expression produced almost entirely by hand. Figurative assortment refers to small pieces made in large quantities using molds.

It is not possible to date the beginning of the production of assorted figurines, but it is known that they were very abundant in Barcelos between the early and mid-20th century. The pieces had a very striking feature: almost all the small objects had a whistle and were sold in markets and fairs as toys and recreational items.

The Figurative Statues (from now on, only the term Figurative will be used) date back to at least the end of the 16th century, with notes indicating that Father Bartolomeu dos Mártires referred to clay dolls during the Council of Trent, a theory that Lapa Carneiro questions.

In their craft, with nimble hands, potters work to reinvent everyday utensils into naive toys and candidly mischievous figurines. But Figurado is also that other “art” of symbolic dimension that exorcises myths, legends, and fears, and elevates clay craftsmanship to a bipolar dimension that wanders between the “divine” and the “demonic.”

A character embodying this tension between the profane and the sacred, Rosa Ramalho, who one day “encountered the monsters of popular mythology,” is the most charismatic artisan in the pottery region of Barcelos. Until the mid-20th century, Figurado was seen as a minor art form. But with Ramalho, the piece/toy gave way to an object of worship for the city elites.

And if Rosa – ours and the world's – is a symbol of a people's creative capacity, the Rooster of Barcelos is an icon of a certain Portuguese identity. From small and whistling (until the first half of the 20th century) to large, colorful, towering, and vain, handmade or with the help of a potter's wheel, the Rooster travels the world and elevates the name of Barcelos and Portugal. This craft of bending and shaping clay to the (un)limited imagination of the potters dates back as far as the depth of the craters gouged into the earth from which the potters extract their raw material.