Jaime Isidoro: Divulgador, Colecionador, Artista

Jaime Isidoro was born on March 21, 1924, in the city of Porto, into a simple family, and grew up in a sad and unfree Portugal. Nevertheless, Jaime Isidoro, who was drawn to artistic practice as a child, made his life an extraordinary adventure, and the country probably owes the creation of its art system to him.

In 1954, after a short but well-known career as a painter and designer, he created the Galeria Alvarez in Porto, the oldest in the country still in operation. This was followed by initiatives at the Casa da Carruagem (Valadares, Vila Nova de Gaia), the Revista de Artes Plásticas, the Encontros Internacionais de Arte, the Biennais Internacionales de Arte and the Café des Arts, in addition to supporting the promotion of Portuguese modernist artists, such as organising the first posthumous exhibition of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. He invested in and promoted a considerable number of artists who are now part of the History of Portuguese Contemporary Art, sponsoring the internationalisation of some of them and playing a unique role in promoting performance in Portugal, as well as the importance of the Galeria Alvarez in what is defined as the “Porto School”. Jaime Isidoro dedicated 40 years to promoting the visual arts, contributed to the development of art collecting in Portugal and left us a collection with thousands of works of art, representative of modern and contemporary art, both national and international. He never stopped painting, and was also an artist. This documentary aims to re-inscribe, in a fair way, his importance in the History of Portuguese Art, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, repositioning him, at the same time, Porto and the North of the country as drivers of the introduction of the avant-garde and bastions of Freedom. He died on January 21, 2009, in the same Porto where he was born, but his legacy makes him eternal.