Window with Blue Shutters

Painted during one of his stays on the island of Capri in the summers of 1882 and 1883, this small unfinished tablet is the culmination of Pousão’s research begun in works like As Casas Brancas de Capri (The White Houses of Capri) and Paisagem de Anacapri (Anacapri Landscape).

This painting exemplifies the most radical geometric understanding of space and the most complex articulation between colour and form that we can find in the artist’s work. The work presents the fragment of the architectural landscape as a pictorial whole, valid for its plastic interest rather than the quality of the mimicry or the symbolic or narrative value of what it represents. It is this proposal, underscoring the independence of painting, understood as a set of colours, planes and shapes rather than as a vehicle for representing a face, a landscape or a still life, that allows Janela das persianas azuis (Window with Blue Shutters) to be celebrated as a work of early modernity.