This eclectic and comprehensive career reveals a desire to understand the present as a springboard for the discovery of History. Thus, when he became a French government fellow in 1959 to fully dedicate himself to Art History, JAF was already self-educated: art interested him as a fact of civilisation, and it is through contemporary production that the cycles of the past are constructed. As a disciple of Pierre Francastel (Paris, 1900-1970), founder of the Sociology of Art, he earned a PhD in History in 1962, with his study Une Ville des Lumières: la Lisbonne de Pombal, a foundational work in the new History of Portuguese Art, due to its methodological rigour and the innovative nature of the thesis : " Pombal 's Lisbon " represented an epistemological break with the old city, partially destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, and an artistic fact that, almost unexpectedly, allowed Portugal to occupy a prestigious place in the international culture of the Enlightenment. In 1969, he earned a Doctorate in Letters with Le Romantisme au Portugal,in which he affirmed other important aspects of his praxis : the importance of literature in Portuguese culture, seen as indispensable for understanding artistic cycles; the centrality of the 19th century for understanding the failures of the 20th century; and the thoroughness of research centred on key facts and personalities of painters, sculptors, and architects. Alongside this academic path, JAF continued to write art criticism for L'Art d'Aujourd'hui, which required him to see exhibitions, become familiar with artists, and take position s,stimulating an increasingly agile and sharp writing style that energised academic reflection. This solid interplay between History and Criticism also manifested itself in the brilliance with which he directed the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's journal Colóquio Artes (1971-1997): especially during its first decade, it was the repository of the dynamics of contemporary art in Portugal, particularly in painting and sculpture. It was in the context of this journal — also linked to the creation of the Portuguese AICA and the promotion of important exhibitions — that JAF boosted the careers of several artists (such as Noronha da Costa and Joaquim Rodrigo) and surrounded himself with his first disciples, particularly Rui Mário Gonçalves and Fernando Pernes, as well as his long-standing complicity with Fernando de Azevedo who, in addition to being a critic, remained one of the painters he most admired. It was within this network of relationships that in the 1960s he organi s ed the first course of lectures on "Western and Portuguese Art History" at the SNBA, coinciding with the preparation of his monumental Arte Portuguesa no Século XIX [Portuguese Art in the 19th Century],1967. This continues to be a key work in academia and among interested audiences, stimulating the deepening of studies and redirection of research through its exhaustive survey of printed sources.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | (Pdf)