Felipe Seade

Felipe Seade (1912 – 18 January 1969) was a painter and teacher who spent most of his life in Uruguay.

Seade was born in Santiago de Chile, the elder son of a Lebanese immigrant family. Eleven years later his whole family moved to Montevideo, Uruguay. At the age of 12 Seade began working as an assistant of the Muralist Enrique Albertazzi and the painter Guillermo Rodríguez. Under Rodríguez' influence Seade took some painting courses at the Fine Arts Circle school. He had his first show in 1925. From 1931 well into the 50's Seade presented work in many national and city halls.

In 1944, Seade began his parallel career as a teacher. He first work as teacher of drawing at the Liceo de Colonia, where he managed to paint the large mural, Alegoría al Trabajo (1936), and later as a professor of the Montevideo Fine Arts School, where he taught for 25 years.

It is impossible to understand Seade's artistic life without a reference to his political life. He wanted to paint for "the people, not for the walls of the bourgeoisie". He aspired to paint murals, the preferred way for his generation to reach the masses, but the only murals he managed to finish were the one in Colonia and the "La marcha del Pueblo a la Piedra Alta" (1939) at the Conference Hall of the Liceo de Florida. However, a significant part or Seade's work is formed by his sketches of murals and preparity sketches for murals.

Thematically, Seade mostly sought to represent the characters of Uruguayan life — washing women, "Gauchos", soccer fans, kids and women. Not from a tourist perspective, which he despised, but with the passion of a convinced social realist.

Seade was also an expert draughtsman. His most public work was a long series of illustrations for a key local magazine, Mundo Uruguayo. His more private drawings were mostly sketches for paintings.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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