Belonging to the first generation of Portuguese modernist painters,[1] Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso stands out among all of them for the exceptional quality of his work and for the dialogue he established with the historical avant-gardes of the early 20th century.

Death at the age of 30 will dictate the abrupt end of a fully mature pictorial work and a promising international career but still in the process of affirmation.

Amadeo would be forgotten a long time ago,[3] inside and, above all, outside Portugal: "The silence that for many years covered the interpretive visibility of his work with a thick blanket […], and that was also the silence of Portugal as a country, not allowed the international historical update of the artist "; and "Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso just started his path of historiographic recognition".

[6] He established contact with other Portuguese artists residing in Paris, including Francisco Smith, Eduardo Viana and Emmerico Nunes.

He attends the studios of Godefroy and Freynet in order to prepare for admission to the architecture course, a project he embraces, partly to meet family expectations, but which he ends up abandoning.

[8] In 1913, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso participated in two seminal exhibitions: the Armory Show in the United States, that travelled to New York City, Boston, and Chicago, and the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, Germany, directed by Herwarth Walden.

His style is aggressive and vivid both in form and colour and his works may seem random or chaotic in their compositional structure at first sight but are clearly defined and balanced.

In 1912 he published an album with twenty drawings, and copied the story of Gustave Flaubert, "La Légende de Saint Julien to l'Hospitalier", in a calligraphic manuscript with illustrations, but these early works attracted little notice.

After his death, his work remained almost unknown until 1952, when a room dedicated to his paintings in Municipal Museum Amadeo Souza-Cardoso gained the public's attention.