Women of the World
Fado
by Marion van den Ende
Her guitar held close, her eyes half closed, she sings without a sound. This is fado: the Portuguese art of making longing audible — the melancholy an entire people carries within.
- TechniqueHahnemühle · Dibond
- Size80 × 80 cm
- EditionEdition of 24
- Price€895
The voice of saudade
Fado — the word comes from the Latin *fatum*, fate — arose in nineteenth-century Lisbon, in the working quarters of the Alfama and the harbour taverns where sailors, abandoned lovers and exiles unburdened their hearts. It is music of the quayside: of those who stayed behind, and those who left and never returned.
At the heart of fado lies one untranslatable word: *saudade* — a longing for someone or something no longer there, half ache, half sweet remembrance. In the twentieth century the great Amália Rodrigues raised fado to world art, and since 2011 the genre has stood on UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Traditionally it is heard by candlelight, accompanied by the pear-shaped Portuguese *guitarra*.
Marion van den Ende paints the singer at the moment sound and soul become one. The fresco treatment lays the patina of centuries over her — as though she sings not a single evening, but every evening Portugal has ever kept awake.
