Description

Data Visualization
HISTORY OF IDEAS
ASTRONOMY / AVANT-GARDE:

Paulo de CANTOS (1892-1979).

Astrarium. Astrofísica. Astronáutica
[Astrarium. Astrophysics. Astronautics]

Porto: Tip. Porto Médico, May 5, 1940.

Small 8°, 163 pp. with black and white photos, maps and illustrations, one colour illustration in text and one full page colour plate, protected with a guard, original illustrated wrappers with flaps (wrappers slightly dusty and stained with small tears in margins, internally clean with only tiny light foxing to first and last pages, sporadic pages slightly loose, sporadic tiny tears and loss of material in upper margins, caused by sloppy separation of uncut sheets).

The title of the book, Astrarium, meaning a mechanical device representing the solar system, indicates, that the richly illustrated text intends to present the astronomy to the reader in an unconventional, multi-dimensional way. The author plays with words, numbers and symbols to create a journey from the Earth through the space to eternity in 9 days in 9 chapters, with first letters of titles spelling the word Astrarium:

Adeus, adeus… ó TERRA!                                  [Goodbye, Goodbye… o Earth!
S. O. S. no sideral Espaço.                                  S. O. S. in Outer Space
Três vezes três, os 9 Planetas Chefes.              Three Times Three, the 9 Chief Planets.
Raios de Sol, cósmicos ou cómicos?                Sunbeams, Cosmic or Comic?
As estrelas do Universo Local. Estelário.        The Stars of the Local Universe.
Rabudos & Companhia. Cometário.                Comets and Company.
Interrogações às Nebulosas. Astrário.             Questions to Nebulae.
Universal ASTRONÁUTICA.                             Universal ASTRONAUTICS.
Mundos além … Rumo ao ∞!                             Worlds beyond… Towards ∞!]

The text is accompanied with photos, illustrations and maps, as well as Cantos’s unique drafts, composed of miniature symbols and geometric forms.

We could not trace any institutional examples on Worldcat.

Paulo de Cantos (1892-1979)

Paulo de Cantos (1892-1979) was a Portuguese author, educator, bibliophile and amateur typographer, who authored between 1920 and 1960 circa 40 (and according to other sources up to 70 titles) on linguistics, geography, anatomy, literature, mathematics and folklore, all illustrated with unusual and unique data visualization, which was a part of his innovative pedagogical theories. His images are composed of repetitive small geometric patterns, letters or musical notes, much closer to modern presentation of information than to the contemporary art of his time.

This aimed to help students detach the letter from its common function of conveying sound (phonetic writing) in order to access the letter’s potential as an expressive shape, capable of producing meaning through a kind of pre-alphabetized logic – i. e. by facing, using and combining it accordingly to its visual / formal similarities to bits of reality. (Rita Carvalho, Letterpress Experiments in a Design Course, Post-Digital Letterpress Printing. Research, Education and Practice, 2021, p. 77.)

Cantos’s work, which was often printed in various techniques, only recently started gaining recognition in Portugal and he remains almost unknown outside of his native country.

A handful of exhibitions (including an exhibition at the Gulbenkian Museum in Paris, between September 19 and October 20, 2017) and a monography (António Silveira Gomes – Cláudia Castelo, A Cantos Compendium: A Designer of Pedagogical Theories, 2023) have been made on him in recent years. According to today’s researches Paulo de Cantos is considered to be decades ahead of his time.

Cantos’s books, printed in only small numbers and mostly surviving in uncut condition, suggest, that his work was only known to a limited circle of his contemporaries.His works only rarely appear in libraries outside Portugal.