The Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, presides today, at 6 pm, at the opening of the Exhibition «PORTRETO DE LA ANIMO ART BRUT ETC.», at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, in Porto.
In the context of the Brute Art exhibition that is now proposed, the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis intends, through its artistic collections and the use of the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, to develop a program that encourages discussion and an approach to mental health through art and artists.
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. They question the limits of reason through different coded messages, formulas, invented figures and secret codes.
The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo“ is an excerpt from this magnificent collection that aims to bring together a nucleus of works focused on portraits and self-portraits that will enter into confrontation or exhibition dialogue with other pieces from the collections of the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis.
The portraits painted by these artists reveal an inner figure, a particularly lively creativity and invention, as can be seen in the works of Aloïse Corbaz, Ted Gordon, James Deed, Edemund Monsiel, Aleksander Lobanov, Alessandra Michelangelo or the Portuguese Jaime Fernandes, among others. . Many of them seem to be self-portraits that claim an existence that these artists were and felt deprived of.
The Soares dos Reis National Museum presents an exhibition of portraits and self-portraits that are part of the Treger Saint Silvestre collection, one of the most important and extensive private collections of Brute Art in the world.
The exhibition “Portreto de la Animo”, according to curator António Saint Silvestre considered “the largest exhibition of Brute Art ever held in the Iberian Peninsula”, is promoted in partnership with the São João da Madeira City Council, the Centro de Arte Oliva and collectors António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger, with patronage support from Fundação Millennium bcp and Lusitânia Seguros and institutional support from Círculo Dr. José de Figueiredo – Association of Friends of MNSR.