The Peripheral Avant-Garde Artist, Part of and Apart from Europe

Abstract

Abstract This article deals with the building of an avant-garde identity in a peripheral European country by returning to a mythical past placed in Egypt. It focuses on the main promoter of Futurism in Portugal, Almada Negreiros, and on how his African roots played a part in the splitting of the self, a phenomenon that at the time was discussed widely in Fernando Pessoa’s circle and which Pessoa himself so dramatically put into practice with the creation of heteronymous identities. It demonstrates how Almada’s heritage was at once an instrument to perform Otherness—that is, a means to construct an identity as civilisation’s Other—and a gateway to accessing the creative origin of all selves through the connecting cipher of ancient Egypt.