Sunday 13 December 2015

The geometrical artwork of José de Almade Negreiros


As always, the annual MathsJam conference was full of wonderful things, and if I ever find time to post on this shamefully neglected blog I may return to some of these topics.  But one of the special highlights of the 2015 MathsJam was Pedro Freitas's talk about the geometrical art of the Portuguese painter José de Almada Negreiros (1893-1970).  Almada Negreiros (who also wrote novels and poems) made a collection of drawings "Language of the Square" which mathematicians will find fascinating.  Happily, Pedro and Simao Palmeirim Costa have written a book Livro de Problemas de Almada Negeriros (Sociedade Portuguesa de Matemática, November 2015) which contains excellent colour reproductions of twenty-nine drawings.  The book is available from https://www.spm.pt/store/list/novidades.

Sadly for me, however, the text is in Portuguese, but an essay by the same authors, in English, can be found at webpages.fc.ul.pt/~pjfreitas/pdfs/AlmadaGeomCanon.pdf

I'm delighted to have discovered these mathematical artworks - yet another MathsJam discovery!