Editorial data

Experimental, peripatetic, recreated with every issue, the magazine KWY remains an isolated case in the context of Portuguese art from the 50s and 60s. Having no domestic models, besides a distant inspiration in the 1911 Modernists, KWY’s lifespan extended to five years and a few months, and was published in Paris between May 1958 (No. 1) and February 1964 (No. 12). It was born of an original idea by Lourdes Castro (1930) and René Bertholo (1935-2005), who created its name by combining three letters that at the time did not exist in the official Portuguese alphabet, and therefore served to enunciate a programme as succinct as it was acute: in the combinatorial and concrete art of letters that were absent from the officiality of the Portuguese language there was a declaration of everything that needed to be declared, the detachment of a shy, idiosyncratic, and closed cultural atmosphere, of little vitality for the arts. This detachment was not a break, however, because Portuguese figures never stopped appearing in the pages of KWY, as plastic artists, poets, mere friends, and collaborators on one or more occasions. As such, until issue 6, the magazine's language was Portuguese, alternated with French, Spanish, German, or English, depending on literary contributions; this lasted until the magazine attracted an increasingly broad and cosmopolitan audience, when French, a more ecumenical language, took precedence, until the final issue 12, which ended the publication in 1964.

In the European artistic and cultural scene of the late 1950s, KWY paired up with other vanguard periodicals. Among them were Panderma - Revue de la fin du monde (1957-1977), by Carl Laszlo; Dé-collage (1962-1969), by Wolf Vostell; Zero=Nul - revue pour la nouvelle conception artistique (1961-1964), by Herman de Vries; Daily-Bul (1957-1983), by André Balthazar and Pol Bury, all of them ephemeral, direct descendants of Dadá and the European Surrealisms. Some of them in fact featured several KWY collaborators, such as Lourdes Castro and René Bertholo. These journals were platforms of heterodoxy and libertarianism, with fluid boundaries and open to all genres, styles, and generations; as the Portuguese magazine gained followers and began distribution, on consignment, through an international network of mostly Franco-German bookstores and art galleries, they were advertised on the KWY pages themselves. However, KWY stood apart from the rest with its artisanal production method, privileging screen printing (and collage) as a technique and graphic design as an aesthetic, the countercurrent of mass media consumer culture that emerged in Europe after World War II and that had something of movements as eccentric as William Morris’ Arts and Crafts.

The studios of Lourdes Castro and René Bertholo were the headquarters of KWY. A drawing table, an easel, and a clothes hanger, René preparing the silks and the printing, Lourdes taking care of the colours and the proof-drying, and, in between, everyday life. The magazine followed the course of the two artists, who arrived in Paris without a permanent home, in search of an attic that they could rent. First, on the Boulevard Pasteur, where they stayed for a few months, between March and November, in a rented room where the magazine's first three issues were made (May, August, October 1958). Then, for another scant five months at the Rue de Vieux Colombier, where issue 4 was printed (May 1959). They already had in mind another home on the Rue des Saints Pères, in the bohemian and venerable 6th arrondissement of Saint Germain des Près, where they remained until after the end of the magazine.

“Caderno publicado em Paris”, “Revista de Artes Plásticas”, “Revue Trimestrielle d’Art Actuel” – the KWY series’ periodicity was as variable as its succession of subtitles. It began as a quarterly publication; then, with the promise of “two or three issues each year”, punctuality was sacrificed to the shifting availability of its editors. KWY was also versatile in the number of pages and in its contents, which were overall a true cocktail of images, styles, and temperaments. The first issue came out as an 8-page brochure, with a modest print run of 60 copies that were distributed among an inner circle. The final issue, No. 12, formally published in the Winter of 1963 as a special issue or “Album”, was a collection of 54 detachable postcards, assembled over 42 pages, in a vast procession of plastic artists, poets, performers, writers, photographers...

In addition to creators René Bertholo and Lourdes Castro, KWY’s editorial team included José Escada (1934-1980), António Costa Pinheiro (1932-2015), Gonçalo Duarte (1935-1986), João Vieira (1934- 2009), Jan Voss (1936), and Christo (1935-2020), in a mixed complicity of utilitarianism and aesthetic affinities that remained until 1961 and ensured the rotation of the covers and the general coordination of editorial content.

KWY was not only permeable to ideas and content, of course, but also to different formats. The first three issues were presented in 30 x 17.5 cm plaquette measurements, in portrait format, and issue 4 experimented with a 24 x 30 cm panorama format, in an extended print run of 100 copies and 12 pages. Issue No. 5, published in December 1959, returned to the vertical format, with 25.5 x 17 cm measurements, with the same 100 copies and 44 pages. KWY 6 featured a mixed, typographic print, interspersed with original silkscreen prints. Typeset at Gráfica Monumental, in Lisbon, with a 500-copy run, the same 25.5 x 17 cm format and 32 pages, it was the only issue for which Portuguese publication and distribution was attempted. Starting with issue 7, the format stabilized at 31 x 21.5 cm, and favoured, in vertical format, silkscreen prints and collage, with print runs of 300 copies and page counts ranging from 36 (KWY 7 and 9) to 60 pages (KWY 11). In addition to the silkscreen print visual compositions, poetry, literature, and art criticism also made appearances, in the form of unpublished, recovered, cut, copied, and adapted texts according to circumstances and tastes.

The first issue, of May 1958, was taken on by Lourdes Castro, who signed a beautiful, non-figurative single-colour composition. Lourdes Castro also played a special role as editorial coordinator in KWY 8 (Autumn 1961) and 12 (Winter 1963). René Bertholo organized two issues, KWY 2 (August 1958) and 10 (Autumn 1962), and was the author of two beautiful covers: one that revealed his interest in colour field painting, a homage to Mark Rothko (KWY 2), another that showed his evolution through a new, free, heteroclite figuration, overflowing with humour and visual quotations, which is related to the kinetic universe of the celibate contraptions that he was then starting to invent. José Escada and António Costa Pinheiro were respectively responsible for issues No. 3 (October 1958) and 4 (May 1959). A special issue, KWY 5 (December 1959), followed, with João Vieira, painter and lyricist poet, as literary editor, bringing to the magazine the poetry of Manuel de Castro, António Ramos Rosa, and Mário Cesariny , with the help of Manolo Millares and António Saura, both visual artists and members of the El Paso group, founded in Madrid in 1957. Gonçalo Duarte was the author of the black-and-white KWY 6 cover. Together with José Escada he was the highlight of this issue. KWY 6 signalled the attempt to transform the magazine into a “serious” product, as René Bertholo stated. However, as it did not live up to the expectations of either the artist-editors or the readers, it went back to the initial purpose iteration: to paint, to paste, to create. Christo was responsible for the editorial design of issue 7, which featured a glued-on and stamped burlap canvas cover. By coincidence, Christo, a Bulgarian immigrant, had arrived in Paris in the same week as the Portuguese artists, and, like them, carried an unshakable confidence in his own art and creativity in whatever little luggage he brought.

Coordinated by Lourdes Castro, KWY 8 was a special issue, with sparkling silver, evoking the feats of Soviet astronomy at the height of the Cold War. Issue 9 was given to Jan Voss, who associated letters designed by Guido Biasi to his cover. From this point on, the KWY editorial team was reduced to Lourdes Castro and René Bertholo, Jan Voss, and Christo. After KWY 10, with organization and cover by René Bertholo, came issue 11, organized by Christo, dedicated to the memory of Yves Klein, whose premature death had shocked the French and international artistic community. No. 12, again organized by Lourdes Castro, was an original issue due to its postcard “Album” concept and because it was the last in a series that the artist had intentionally declared to end. For “reasons of superstition”, KWY 13 would never see the light of day.

Ana Filipa Candeias