Description

Data Visualization
HISTORY OF IDEAS
LANGUAGE / AVANT-GARDE

Paulo de CANTOS (1892-1979).

[S. l., S. d, but circa 1938-1940].

With this short dictionary of correct Portuguese words against foreign and colonial expressions Paolo de Cantos intended to remind people of the beauty of their native language with a hope that “all Portuguese people, especially children and women, stop barking like dogs and grunting like pigs”.

De Cantos especially emphasizes the dying of long Portuguese vowels, which he compares to music.

The attractive cover with a shape of a human face is composed of tiny geometric shapes and letters, calling for the connection of correctly spoken language of the pact with the musical pronunciation in the future.

The last page advertises de Cantos’s ABC book (see: O abc. Para meninos e meninas dos 5 aos se…tenta anos! Mínimo, proveito máximo. – Daša Pahor).

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.