The human body, when studied through the scope of artistic interest, arises as a formal unit, or as a related ensemble of forms, that will appeal to the artist in the most diverse ways. Anatomy will emerge, in this way, as a discipline of not only scientific interest, but also as a vast theme of study in the artistic field. Once the main structures are known; volumes and forms that compose a human body; the feeling of curiosity comes naturally by the artist, of exploring and trying to find new forms resulting from this. These new forms arise as a consequence of a shift in the point-of-view of the artist regarding the figure (or just one of it’s parts). In this way, the figure positioned in different and odd points of view will be considered in foreshortening. Foreshortening is thus, the representation of a volumetric figure, seen in a forced perspective where the parts of the body find themselves overlapping and their surfaces present themselves as apparently distorted. It’s a bidimensional representation originally defined by the portrayal, of a figure seen in perspective, built from geometrical and mathematical fundaments, that confer it’s tridimensional aspect. Thus, knowledge of the basic forms of anatomy can be a deciding factor in the recognition of the structure of the body, with the goal of generating a representation without inaccuracies. In a sense, the geometrical fundaments appear as an essential auxiliary tool for the realization of a foreshortening. The artist measures, compares and separates what he sees, on the basis of geometry applied to anatomy, to build a human figure that won’t cease to amaze the observer through the discovery of forms now renewed

Tese de mestrado, Anatomia artística, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas Artes, 2012