Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos

Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos was a Portuguese surrealist poet. He published several major works during a career spanning 50 years. Cesariny was also a painter, but his work became more centered on poetry in the 1950s. Mário Cesariny was born in Lisbon, Portugal, the youngest child and only son of Viriato de Vasconcelos and María de las Mercedes Cesariny, a Spaniard of French but originally Italian ancestry. Mário Cesariny studied in the prestigious Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio and also studied music with the composer Fernando Lopes Graça. Later he joined the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he met André Breton in 1947. He soon became influenced by the French surrealist movement and was one of the biggest supporters of the movement in Portugal, where he founded the Lisbon Surrealist Movement with other Portuguese artists including Alexandre O'Neill and José-Augusto França. After being acquainted with the surrealist movement, Cesariny moved away from the ...