By the 1980s, ESPIGA Pinto’s work had become more concentrated, more reflective. The familiar signs remained: the horse, the wheel, the feminine figure, the sun, the map, the memory of the Alentejo. Yet they now appeared within a quieter and more deliberate order. The image was no longer only opening outward. It was turning inward, gathering experience into structure.
The Luso-Geometric period is often used to describe this mature phase of his practice, from 1980 onwards. “Luso” points to the Portuguese field of memory that became increasingly present in the work: Camões, Os Lusíadas, Inês de Castro, myth, history and literary imagination. “Geometric” refers to the discipline through which ESPIGA organised these references. In his hands, geometry is never dry. It is a way of thinking, remembering and holding things in relation.
ESPIGA had long been drawn to structure. In his Interview in Monologue, he described geometry as present “in our gestures, in our minds, in the architecture of the universe”. That conviction gives the later works their particular force. Circles, arcs, divisions and signs do not sit on the surface as decoration. They act as measures of thought.
'19th Map of Festive Memory (Mapa da memória festiva XIX)', 1990. Acrylic on canvas. 120 cm diam.
A useful point of entry is the 1980 exhibition Têmperas, at Galeria São Mamede in Lisbon. The poet David Mourão-Ferreira placed ESPIGA within a modern lineage of the “organic, the systematic and the rigorous”. The phrase remains apt. These are maps, but not maps of ordinary territory. They chart recurrence, energy, recollection and inner movement.
Earlier motifs return with new weight. The wheel, once linked to the cart and to rural labour, becomes a sign of orbit, return and continuity. The horse, rooted in childhood memory, becomes curve, movement and heraldic presence. The feminine figure, present from the beginning, appears as head, goddess, nymph, queen or historical memory. Inês de Castro enters this world as a figure through whom love, legend, violence and endurance can be held in symbolic form.
This later work may seem more abstract at first glance, but it is not closed. ESPIGA gives the viewer anchors: a circle, a head, a solar mark, a horse, an architectural division, a field of colour. These forms recur across paintings, prints, sculptures and public works, changing their meaning according to their place in the composition. The more one looks, the more the vocabulary becomes familiar.
Printmaking has a special place here. In silkscreens and engravings, ESPIGA’s mature language becomes intimate and precise. Line, colour, layering and repetition suit his search for order without reducing the image to a formula. A print from this period can carry the same symbolic world as a large painting or public commission, but on a scale that invites slower looking.
'Lady at the Window with Vision of the White Horse Halting and Facing the Ray of Light, diptych (Dama à janela com visão do cavalo branco parando frente ao raio de luz, díptico), 1997. Signed & dated. Acrylic on canvas. 120 x 80 cm. Private collection.
The 1990s brought important recognition. In 1992, ESPIGA presented EGOMEMÓRIAS 1954-1992 at the National Library in Lisbon. Around these years, his geometry also entered public space through works such as Mapa da Memória Inicial in central Lisbon and Lady and Swan in Oeiras.
What makes the Luso-Geometric works so compelling is their sense of condensation. Nothing is abandoned. The Alentejo remains in the earth colours, the horse, the wheel and the festive sign. The cosmic decade remains in the sphere, the orbit and the mapped field. Portuguese literary and historical memory enters through Camões, Os Lusíadas and Inês de Castro. Geometry provides these elements with order and harmony.
'Lady and Swan (Dama e Cisne)'. Bronze and stone. 1994. Oeiras, Portugal. Photo © Estate of José Manuel Espiga Pinto.
The works reward time rather than immediate explanation. They ask the eye to follow a curve, a line, a sign, a warm field of colour, a female figure inside an arc. Gradually, the image begins to disclose its own rhythm and inherent structure.
In the Luso-Geometric period, ESPIGA Pinto’s world becomes unmistakably his own: reflective, lyrical and disciplined, shaped by the firm evidence of memory that emerges as form.
