Started in the 1980s, the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, on deposit at the Centro de Arte Oliva, includes a large collection of works of Art Brut, one of the most important and extensive private collections in the world, with a large number of recognized authors.
Inspired by the journey started by Jean Dubuffet, a pioneer in collecting these artistic productions, the two collectors have put together a set of works that become accounts of the unconscious and unintentionally take on subversive aspects in the face of the discourse of the norm and the established order.
The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo”, on display at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, is a selection of this magnificent collection that brings together a group of works focused on portraiture and self-portraiture, in confrontation or exhibition dialog with other pieces from the Museum’s collections.
The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo”, on display at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, is a selection of this magnificent collection that brings together a group of works focused on portraiture and self-portraiture, in confrontation or exhibition dialog with other pieces from the Museum’s collections.
Jaime Fernandes (Portugal, 1899 – 1969)
“Jaime Fernandes is unequivocally the most recognized artist of Portuguese Art Brut/Outsider. However, this recognition comes mainly from abroad, a fact that can be explained both by the loss of a large part of his work and by the fact that most of the rest is scattered in collections abroad.
This obscurity is due to facts that are no stranger to the circumstances of his isolated life, the way he developed his work and how it subsequently circulated: diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1938, Jaime was hospitalized for more than three decades at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital (Lisbon), where he died in 1969.
According to testimonies and references to the drawings in the hospital’s clinical records, and the letters he wrote to his wife, Jaime Fernandes unexpectedly started drawing at the age of 66, four years before his death.
All of his known work consists of undated drawings made with colored ballpoint pens on various types of paper. All of his known work is made up of undated drawings, made with colored ballpoint pens on various types of paper. In them, a reduced form of figures, including imaginary animals, human or anthropomorphic figures, appear and reappear in countless variations, always drawn in a dense weave of lines.
His letters, other writings and drawings were filmed after his death by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, giving rise to the film Jaime (1974), which marked the first time the artist’s work was made public.
To quote António Reis, Jaime Fernandes “had a perfect sense of the space to be occupied by the drawing or painting. As he was limited by the small dimensions of the paper, many of his figures – men – have their arms down or raised, while the animal figures have their tails down. Therefore, the attitudes of the drawing are always a function of the delimitation of the paper, for which he always found an ingenious plastic solution. It is possible that they are also linked to an emotional, obsessive stereotyping and to archetypes…””
Source: Centro de Arte Oliva