In 1902 he enrolled in the Sculpture course at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, at the suggestion of Teixeira Lopes. He finished the course in 1911, the year he left for Paris. The sculptors Bourdelle and Rodin were major influences on his work.

In 1913 he took part in the Salon of French Artists and held his first solo exhibition in Porto. In 1915 he took part in the 1st Porto Humourists’ Salon, with drawings signed under the pseudonym “Maria Clara”.

In the following years, he divided his activities between Porto, Lisbon and Paris and, in 1921, settled in the French capital. This phase was marked by an intense social life and professional activity, sculpting, writing and organising exhibitions.

His Parisian phase includes the sculptural group L’Adieu ou Le pardon (1920), a gestural static work that combines a neo-romantic sensibility and a symbolist connotation with a cosmopolitan and modern formal and plastic dimension.

In 1926 he settled in Lisbon and in 1930 published his first work (14, Cité Falguière, memórias dos tempos de Paris). In the following years he continued to produce art, responding to private and official commissions.

In 1941, now widowed, he gave up sculpture and devoted himself to literary activity. He published biographies of artists, studies, booklets and prefaces to exhibition catalogues.

In 1944 he was invited to head the National Museum of Contemporary Art, a post he held until the end of his life. In 1946 he remarried and, two years later, he was commissioned by the Ministry of the Colonies to direct and accompany a travelling art exhibition in Angola and Mozambique.

In the 1950s, he was invited to organise the classification of properties of public interest, an activity he continued alongside participating in art exhibitions and writing reviews and essays on art and museology.

Source: National Museum of Contemporary Art in Chiado

Photo: Sculpture Cabeça de Rapaz (Head of a boy), by Diogo de Macedo, collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum

Cover Photo: Diogo de Macedo @Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

The temporary exhibition’s parallel programme includes, on 9 December at 12 noon, a guided tour by José Rui Teixeira, about “Portraits and self-portraits – Between the disorder of lucidity and the semantics of madness”.

In this exhibition, we only know where to enter and, in the end, where to leave. Inside, all the routes are random. There are no signs, only tendencies to move, with the awareness that those who move are displaced in a reality that is transformed in the place of a drift. What fits into the realms of raw art? Let’s accept – as an exercise in an epistemology without responsibilities – that raw art is what results from the intrinsic violence of being between these two abandonments: being and existing.

Bio

José Rui Teixeira was born in Porto in 1974. After theological and philosophical studies, he took a doctorate in Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. He is the director of the Sophia Chair at the Catholic University. He collaborates with important European and South American research centres, institutes and chairs, taking part in projects, giving lectures and publishing essays that bring together his areas of training and scientific interest: theology, philosophy, literature and art, anthropology and the history of culture and religions. He is the pedagogical director of the Colégio Luso-Francês (Porto), an editor and a poet.

José Júlio de Sousa Pinto was born in the Azores on 15 September 1856 and died in France on 14 April 1939. In 1870, he began his studies at the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes, where he was a pupil of Thadeu Maria de Almeida Furtado, João António Correia and Soares dos Reis, and proved to be a brilliant student. With the Painting course completed in 1878 and high marks, new horizons opened up for him.

In 1880, he applied to the Portuguese boarding school abroad and, having won the competition, left for Paris that same year to study history or figure painting. He left at the same time as his fellow student Henrique Pousão, who was competing in Landscape. In Paris, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and was a pupil of Yvon and Cabanel. He would come to be influenced by Jules Breton and, above all, Bastien-Lepage. Right from the start, he showed his talents and application skills, working hard and winning prizes.

Still a student, in 1884 he exhibited his work Macieira partida (Snapped Apple Tree, now owned by the Soares dos Reis National Museum and on display in the long-term exhibition) at the Salon exhibitions. In 1899, the painting “La récolte des pommes de terre” led him to the glory of being represented at the Musée du Luxembourg (today the Musée d’Orsay).

A renowned artist during his lifetime, in addition to the prizes he won in many of the exhibitions he entered, Sousa Pinto was decorated with the Orders of Santiago de Espada and Christ of Portugal, the Legion of Honour of France and was an Honorary Member of the Madrid Society of Artists. He is represented in several museums in France, Monte Carlo, the United States, Australia and Rio de Janeiro.

In Portugal his works are scattered among a large number of private collectors and in museums such as Grão Vasco, Casa-Museu dos Patudos, Casa-Museu Teixeira Lopes and Museu do Chiado.

The Soares dos Reis National Museum has works by Sousa Pinto from the Portuense Academy of Fine Arts, the former Municipal Museum, gifts and bequests. The group of works by this artist in the Fernando de Castro House-Museum is significant, consisting of portraits, genre scenes and landscapes, oils and pastels, with themes from Portugal and France.

Image credits
Portrait of a man in profile
José Julio de SOUSA PINTO (1856-1939)
@Galerie Mendes

In 1861, the Carrancas Palace was acquired by King Pedro V to become the official residence of the royal family during their visits to the north of the country and was remodelled.

In 1915, it was donated to Misericórdia through the will of King Manuel II, who wanted to build a hospital there, but this never materialised. Later, the State bought the palace to house the Soares dos Reis National Museum, which had been founded in 1833 and was housed in the Santo António Convent, now the Porto Municipal Public Library.

The Carrancas Palace was again remodelled for its new function and in 1940 the Soares dos Reis National Museum, the oldest public art museum in Portugal, was inaugurated here.

Between 1992 and 2001, the building underwent a series of major refurbishments by architect Fernando Távora. Outside there is a patio with pink walls and tiles that gives way to the garden in the centre of the building. The green space with lawn is fully emphasised by the camellias.

The theme of this year’s Flimar was Historical Heritage and it was attended by a number of special guests. The programme aimed to promote discussion and reflection on the municipality’s cultural and historical heritage, establishing connections between local history, job creation and prospects for the future.

Marechal Deodoro is a Brazilian municipality in the state of Alagoas. It was the first capital of Alagoas and the birthplace of Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca, the then Marshal of the Brazilian Army who proclaimed the Republic of Brazil and was Brazil’s first president. The municipality is part of the Maceió Metropolitan Region.

It is known for its buildings of historical value, such as churches, mansions and other buildings.

For the first 20 years of his life, Machciński was convinced that Tompkins was his mother. The end of his “American dream” and the loss of this supposed identity influenced his artistic work.

His oeuvre consists of more than 22,000 fictitious or appropriated identities, captured in photographic and film self-portraits. In his reenactments, the artist embodies carefree film stars, pop culture icons, historical figures, literature and politics and other eccentric characters of different ethnic, sexual or social affiliations, reinventions of his own identity.

In his work, Machciński acts as a director and actor, make-up and costume designer, archivist, photographer and performance artist. His artistic practice is related to European Art History by playing with traditional methods of representation and their conventions.

On the other hand, he follows the strategy of conceptual photography that uses the self-image as a vehicle to negotiate different meanings, also present in the work of Cindy Sherman or Luigi Ontani. Tomasz Machciński is a leading figure in “raw” photography.

The year after the creation of the Tomasz Machciński Foundation, in 2018, his films were shown at the Whitechapel Gallery (London); that same year he took part in the Rencontres de la Photographie (Arles) in the exhibition PHOTO l BRUT, collection Bruno Decharme & compagnie.

In 2020, he exhibited at the American Folk Art Museum in New York and, finally, a major retrospective exhibition dedicated to the artist at the Manggha (Krakow) in 2021.

Tomasz Machciński died in January 2022 at the age of 79.

The Prado Museum in Madrid opened to the public on 19 November 1819 with a collection of 311 paintings from the royal collection, all by Spanish authors, in a building designed by the architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785 and commissioned by Charles III to house the Gabinete de Ciencias Naturales.

It was only later that Ferdinand VII, together with his wife, the Portuguese queen Maria Isabel de Bragança, the main driving force behind this Museum, took the decision to set up the Royal Museum there.

In addition to the objects on display and listed in the museum’s first catalogue, published at the time of its opening, there were 1,510 objects in reserve, also from the royal collections, which had been started in the 16th century on the initiative of Emperor Charles V and enriched by his successors, including some of the museum’s main references.

About Maria Isabel de Bragança
Maria Isabel of Bragança, wife of King Ferdinand VII and Queen Consort of Spain from 1816 until 1818, was the daughter of John VI of Portugal and his wife, Queen Carlota Joaquina. She was the eldest sister of Pedro IV of Portugal (Pedro I of Brazil).

Maria Isabel of Bragança stood out for her interest in culture and affection for art. She took the initiative to collect artworks from the Spanish monarchs to create a royal museum, the future Prado Museum.

Because she died a year before the opening, Maria Isabel de Bragança did not attend the opening of the museum, but her important role in founding it has not been forgotten.

Maria Isabel de Bragança has a portrait in the Museum dating from 1829, by Bernardo López Piquer, entitled “María Isabel de Braganza como fundadora del Museo del Prado”.

In the image, Maria Isabel de Bragança points with her right arm to a place visible through a window, and with her left hand she reveals some plans for the construction of the museum deposited on a table, on parchments or papers.

According to Pedro de Madrazo, author of the catalogue of the Royal Museum’s paintings (a document dated 1854) “it was Queen Maria Isabel of Bragança who suggested the idea (of creating the Museum) to the King, by ‘escitacion’ of some personalities who loved the Fine Arts, an idea that the King welcomed with real enthusiasm”.

Image: María Isabel de Braganza as founder of the Prado Museum
LÓPEZ PIQUER, BERNARDO
Copyright ©National Prado Museum

Henrique Pousão was born on 1st January 1859 in Vila Viçosa, where he also died at the age of 25.

He entered the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, where he was honoured as a painter of the first naturalist generation, and was a state pensioner in France and Italy.

His work is strongly represented in the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, where you can find the works “Casas Brancas de Capri” (The white houses of Capri), “Senhora Vestida de Preto” (Lady in black) and “Janelas das Persianas Azuis” (Window with blue blinds), all classified as national treasures.

His paintings of roads and streets, courtyards, houses and aspects of Paris bear witness to his creative journey, which culminated in his stays in Rome and Capri.

His work, which reveals the boldness and talent of the young painter and his absolute interest in the values of the painting itself to the detriment of the themes or the narrative, was given, after his premature death, to the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes.

Henrique Pousão (1859-1884)

His family recognised his talent from an early age, especially in his pencil portraits. At the age of 10, he moved to Barcelos and, in 1872, settled in Porto. It was in this city that he attended the atelier of the painter António José da Costa to prepare for his entry into the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes (1872). Greatly influenced by Marques de Oliveira, who had returned from Paris in 1879, Pousão won the competition to become a pensioner and arrived in Paris at the end of 1880, accompanied by Sousa Pinto (1856 – 1939).

In Spain, he had already visited the Prado Museum and before joining Cabanel and Yvon’s studio, he also visited art galleries and museums in Paris and learnt about Impressionism, especially in 1881 in the French region of Puy-de-Dômes, in the village of Saint-Sauves.

That year, he moved to Rome, where he rented a studio and, in 1882, produced significant works, also in Naples and Capri. Landscapes with a poetic and vibrant colour, exercises in capturing light, genre paintings such as Cecília (on the cover photo), and portraits, such as Senhora Vestida de Preto (Lady in black), done in Paris, reveal his modernity, unusual in the Portuguese art scene. Victimised at the age of 25 by tuberculosis, his work became important decades later.

The death at the age of 30 dictated the abrupt end of a pictorial work in full maturity and a promising international career, but still in the affirmation phase.

Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso had a short and intense life in Paris, where he made contacts with modernist artists, and returned to Portugal at the beginning of the World War I as a painter recognized in avant-garde circles.

He participated in group exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, New York, Chicago, Boston and London, and exhibited and sold his work in the United States, being considered, by the American art critic Robert Loescher, “one of the most well-kept from the beginning of modern art”.

In 2016, more than 40 thousand people visited the exhibition dedicated to Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, in Porto (which later went to the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon), and, in the same year, at the Grand Palais, in Paris, another exhibition brought together around 250 works by the artist in painting, drawing and engraving.

The exhibition at Soares dos Reis National Museum was a recreation of another solo that Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso held in Porto, in 1916, in the former Passos Manuel Garden.

Written and directed by Zeferino Mota, the play “The Pleasure of Objects” is presented in the form of a lecture and addresses issues related to heritage and memory, finding its natural habitat in the conference room of a museum.

An actress in the character of an art historian presents the paper “The Pleasure of Objects”. The recent death of a close person had made her discover how a significant absence sacralises photographs, letters, crockery, gestures, etc. and how it is relationships of affinity that make an object real; it becomes real through a bond and closeness.

This “revelation” is proposed directly to the audience listening to the “lecture”: the object made sacred by memory is preserved, recycled, invited to occupy a place, it can last a lifetime and can even be a legacy for future generations; its prolonged contemplation contrasts with the rhythm of our time, in which images pass fleetingly across the retina and the multiplicity of alternatives means that we have no obligation or need to linger in one place.

The biography shared by the “performer” as a speaker is only apparently individual; it is the story lived by men and women trying to reach a place they can call home.

* The Unidos pelo Edu campaign is in favour of the rehabilitation of Eduardo Cunha, a 17-year-old student on the Acting Course at ACE Escola de Artes. In April this year, he had an accident in a swimming pool and suffered a serious injury to his neck. Now, after a difficult and long process in intensive care at Hospital de Santo António, he is undergoing intense rehabilitation. His family, who have been supporting him constantly, have launched a fundraising campaign @unidospeloedu, with which ACE Escola de Artes, Teatro do Bolhão and the Soares dos Reis National Museum are associated.

Teatro do Bolhão was formed in 2002 by a group of eleven professionals under the artistic direction of António Capelo, Glória Cheio, João Paulo Costa, Joana Providência and Pedro Aparício, later joined by António Júlio. The company, based at the Palácio do Bolhão, has a synergistic relationship with the ACE School of Arts, integrating the young professionals trained into a constantly renewing team. Since 2010, the company has been promoting an Educational Service that fosters a continuous and organic relationship with the region in which it operates through workshops, laboratories and workshops, as well as through the Portable Theatre, which takes literary works taught at different levels of education to schools.

The Bolhão Theatre is an entity funded on a four-year basis by the Directorate-General for the Arts – Ministry of Culture.

In this workshop, we intend to share a project that allows with simple materials to prove that it is possible to create an illustrative tool for Art and Optics at the same time, also proving that there is a lot of Science in Art.

The camera lucida is a very important auxiliary drawing instrument for photography and optical physics. This instrument allows the user to simultaneously observe the object to be drawn and the drawing surface, such as a decal.

Through observation through the camera lucida, the designer can simply document the key points of the sculpture or image to be reproduced, or trace all the lines of force of the form or composition.

This activity is part of the Science and Technology Week 2023 program, taking place between November 20th and 26th, with the aim of publicizing and promoting scientists, what they research and their contributions to the advancement of knowledge and the well-being of society.

Hundreds of science and technology dissemination actions are carried out organized by scientific institutions, universities, schools, museums and science centers across the country.

Colloquiums, exhibitions, science cafes or activities in laboratories are examples of initiatives organized during this period that have contributed to the appropriation of science by citizens. The public, especially younger audiences, has the opportunity to learn more about the scientific community and the most recent research results in the most diverse scientific areas.

Science and Technology Week includes the National Scientific Culture Day, established on November 24th in honor of the professor, poet and science popularizer Rómulo de Carvalho, who was born on this date. National Scientific Culture Day was established in 1996, and the celebration of scientific culture was extended to a week the following year.

Manuel Maria Lúcio, an amateur painter, chose the painter Artur Loureiro as his master. Among the artists who frequented his studio in the gardens of the Crystal Palace, Manuel Maria Lúcio was one of his favourite disciples. Since 1944, the Soares dos Reis National Museum has housed a significant part of his art collection and library.

In Gaia, in the house where he lived all his life, he assembled an important collection, especially of contemporary paintings, pieces of furniture, earthenware and enamels. As well as being a collector, Manuel Maria Lúcio was a remarkable bibliophile.

Although he didn’t study at the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes, he used books and publications as a vehicle for artistic culture. In the screens, boards and pastels he painted, we can see various aspects of the Alto-Douro and Vale do Vouga regions, Gaia and Porto, such as Rio Douro, from 1906, exhibited at the Soares dos Reis National Museum.

Joaquim Lopes enrolled at the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1906, where he was taught by José de Brito in Drawing and Marques de Oliveira in Painting. Marques de OIiveira had a great influence on his education and his friendship and admiration for the master are evident in the work he later wrote about him.

In Oporto, Joaquim Lopes was a member of the Oporto Fine Arts Society, presenting his work at its exhibitions from 1918 onwards and taking part in the attempt at renewal carried out by various artists.

In his vast oeuvre he touched on various genres, such as landscape, which was a frequent motif in his painting, giving it a characteristic colour and vigour. In addition to the Soares dos Reis National Museum, Joaquim Lopes’ work can be found in various museums and public institutions, such as the Chiado Museum in Lisbon, the Grão Vasco Museum in Viseu and the Abade de Baçal Museum in Bragança, as well as in private collections.

Image
Soares dos Reis National Museum
Inventory No.: 900 Pin CMP/ MNSR
Title: Boats unloading on the River Douro
Author: Lopes, Joaquim Francisco
Dated: 1927

On 22 November, the parallel programme of the Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc. exhibition offers a guided tour by Antónia Gaeta on the theme of “Curating Art Brut”.

Antonia Gaeta has a degree in Conservation of Cultural Property from the University of Bologna. She has a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from FBAUL and a PhD in Contemporary Art from the College of Arts of the University of Coimbra.

Since 2003 she has developed research, publishing and exhibition projects with various art institutions in Portugal and abroad. She has published texts in art catalogues, specialist magazines and exhibition programmes.

She was the executive coordinator of the Portuguese representations at the Venice Art Biennale (2009 and 2011 editions) and the São Paulo Art Biennale (2008 and 2010 editions) for DGARTES. In 2015 she began her regular collaboration with the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection on deposit at the Oliva Art Centre. In October 2019 she opened VERÃO in Lisbon, a space for experimentation in the visual arts.

Curator of the exhibition Nobody. Only me, an exhibition that results from the residency and support project for artistic creation coordinated by Antonia Gaeta around the exhibition Jaime: “I saw a dog of mine with wolves”. The artists were invited to engage in a dialogue with the life and work of Jaime Fernandes, a cult outsider artist whose work has remained known mainly through the film Jaime (1974) by António Reis and not so much through direct contact with his drawings.

Antonia Gaeta proposed a reflection on the author’s imaginary and the particularities of his biography: Jaime Fernandes (1899-1969) was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalised for more than three decades at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital (Lisbon); drawing and writing emerged late and unexpectedly in the last years of his life, in the context of hospital confinement.

Thus, the works in Nobody. Only me weave threads related to ideas about “restricted experience”; “complementarity between experience and description”; “imagination and memory”, reconfiguring and materialising an inner world of subjective and poetic laws.

He exhibited at the Salon in 1876 and 78. Settling in Rome, he travelled with Marques de Oliveira to various cities in Italy.

In 1879 he returned to Portugal. The landscapes he presented at the historic exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes in 1880 introduced the naturalist aesthetic to Portugal. Around him, a group of young painters gathered for the annual “Exposições de Quadros Modernos” (Exhibitions of Modern Paintings), which Columbano celebrated in 1885 with the collective portrait O Grupo do Leão.

In the last years of his activity, he developed a painting of regional types and customs, which would be explored in a more exuberant way by Malhoa and Carlos Reis.

Among the numerous works by Silva Porto on display at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, we would highlight the oil on canvas Colheira – Ceifeiras (Harvesting – Reapers) (pictured). This work was part of the Honório de Lima bequest in favour of Porto City Council in 1941.

Elisa Adelaide Bessa Lima, widow of Eduardo Honório de Lima, in fulfilment of her husband’s wishes, bequeathed 21 paintings by Silva Porto to Porto City Council in 1941. These 21 artworks are included in the 1938/39 General Inventory of the Porto Municipal Museum, whose collection was deposited at the Soares dos Reis National Museum in 1940/41, in accordance with Decree-Law 27.879 of 21 July 1937.

Cover photo: António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850-1893), Portuguese artist, in an engraving published in 1886 in Diario Illustrado (@National Library of Portugal)

Maria Amélia Paiva

Maria Amélia Paiva has a degree in History, Art variant, from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, and a Master’s degree in History of Art in Portugal from the Department of Heritage Sciences and Techniques.

She has published several academic papers on civil architecture, with a special focus on the noble houses of the Ponte de Lima municipality. She is the author of the book “The shutters in the municipality of Ponte de Lima: structures, functions and meanings”, published by the Ponte de Lima Town Council, and of several articles in magazines.

She has taken part in national and international congresses with public presentations of her research work. She has also worked for private companies on written assignments. She is the creator of two senior groups, UPA (Unidos pela Arte) and Mais Além, which aim to energise the lives of older people, giving them back dignity and quality of life through new cultural experiences.

Joyce Veiga

Graduated in Agricultural Engineering from the University of São Paulo, and Occupational Safety Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She worked for 15 years in the automotive and oil industries.

Eight years ago she made a radical career change to follow her dream of working in design. He has lived in Portugal for 4 years.

He has created more than 700 drawings for clients in Brazil, the United States and Europe, and has illustrated several books.

Maria José Maya

Maria José Maya has a Master’s degree in Art History from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, which she completed in 2022.

Delfim Maya’s granddaughter, she has been researching and writing about him for many years.

She is the promoter of the Delfim Maya sculptor prize, which runs until the end of December 2023, in collaboration with ESAD.CR – Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, the League of Friends of the José Malhoa Museum and some Higher Education Institutions.

He organised the conference and exhibition “A self-taught modernist: Delfim Maya (1886- 1978)” at the National Library.

She took part in the digital catalogue of the “History of the Art Exhibitions of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation”, writing about Delfim Maia, Hein Semke, Canto da Maia and Emmerico Nunes, in 2019.

Fátima Lambert

Graduated in Philosophy (1982), Master in Philosophy/Aesthetics (1986) and PhD in Aesthetics/Philosophy – Faculty of Philosophy Braga/U. Católica Portuguesa (1998). She is a Coordinating Professor – Aesthetics and Education – at the Escola Superior Educação/Politécnico do Porto, where she coordinates the Heritage Management degree and the Heritage, Arts and Cultural Tourism Master’s programme.

She coordinates the research line on Culture, Art and Education – InED (FCT)/ESE-P.Porto, of which she was director. She is a member of various scientific and editorial committees for scientific journals in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. She is an art critic (member of AICA) and independent curator. Her main lines of research are: Aesthetic Education and Contemporary Art; [In]visibility of women in history: thought, work and action; Travellers: writers and artists in the 19th century; Landscape, Journey and Utopia; Writing, Image and Performance – intermediality. She publishes regularly in scientific journals, and is the author of books and monographs.

Samuel Rama

Graduated in Visual Arts from the Caldas da Rainha School of Arts and Design, where he has taught since 2003. Doctorate in Visual Arts in 2013. Researcher at LIDA – Laboratório de Investigação em Design e Artes.

His work focuses on researching the intricate and complex relationship between the mediums of sculpture, drawing and photography and notions of landscape. His solo exhibitions include: Inhabit the Penumbra (2005), Módulo – Centro Difusor de Arte, Porto; MAGMA (2008), Galeria 111 – Lisbon and Porto, SCANNING (2010) Arquivo Fotográfico de Lisboa, Lisbon; MEGAPARSECS (2012) Teatro da Politécnica, Lisbon.

Finalist in the IV International Expanded Painting Prize (2007), Museo de Bellas Artes de Castellón, Spain and the X Mostra Internacional UNION FENOSA (2008), Museo de Arte Contemporâneo União Fenosa, Coruña, Spain.

On 19 November, the parallel programme of the Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc. exhibition offers a workshop and a performance related to movement and choreography.

Scheduled for 10.30am, the workshop “A walk through the nature of the body” aims to launch a challenge related to the multiple readings of the body as landscape, machine or animal. How movement and its choreography can open up new narratives about the body, looking at others and being nature.

The activity, which lasts 1.5 hours, is aimed at families and the general public and is free of charge.

At 12 noon, the performance “IO – Landscapes, Machines, Animals” will be presented, the first piece in a series of works by Né Barros that move between Landscapes, Machines and Animals. The piece IO takes its name from one of Jupiter’s four large moons which, despite being located in an icy region, is characterised by being the place with the greatest volcanic activity in the Solar System.

It is with this title that José Alberto Gomes launches his album, which is based on the manipulation and deconstruction of the rich, hypnotic timbre of the baritone saxophone and which is structured as a one-breath, patient, multi-layered work, admittedly influenced by the universe of science fiction and strongly marked by the introspective tones always present in the work of BlacKoyote (the album’s label). It is this environment of extremes and contrasts that also inspires the final piece directed by Né Barros, which takes on a hybrid form between concert and performance.

The activity, which lasts 50 minutes, is aimed at families and the general public and is free, subject to capacity.

NÉ BARROS

Choreographer and dancer, researcher at the Philosophy Institute of the University of Porto in the Aesthetics, Politics and Knowledge group. She has developed her artistic work in connection with her academic studies and research. She began her training in classical dance and later worked in contemporary dance and choreographic composition in the United States (Smith College). She has a PhD in Dance (University of Lisbon) and a Master’s in Dance Studies (Laban Centre, London). She completed a post-doctorate at the Institute of Philosophy on the aesthetics of performances. She studied Theatre (ESAP). As a choreographer, she has collaborated with visual artists, photographers, film directors, directors and musicians.

JOSÉ ALBERTO GOMES

Musician, sound artist and curator. He completed the piano course at the Porto Conservatory and, in 2007, finalised his degree in Composition at ESMAE. He has a PhD in Computer Music from Universidade Católica Portuguesa and has been involved in teaching in the field of art and new media. He is currently coordinator of the Braga Media Arts Educational Service (UNESCO Creative City in the field of Media Arts) where he develops and guides content, shows and artistic creation projects linked to new technologies in art, community and education. He teaches at the School of Arts – UCP, on the Master’s Degree in Digital Games Development Engineering – IPCA and on the PhD in Media and Digital Art at Universidade Aberta.

Landscapes, flora and fauna, everyday life, religion and the supernatural universe are the subjects addressed in the 15 volumes, whose publication began in 1814.

Of the 15 original volumes, the collector Fernando de Castro acquired 13 that form part of his collection dedicated to the East.

Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) began training as a sculptor at the age of 15. He then dedicated his long life almost exclusively to creating prints on colored wood blocks and used around 30 different artists’ names.

His most famous work is “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” from the series “36 Views of Fuji”. His style inspired artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Gustav Klimt and also contributed to the Japonisme movement.

As part of the programme for the month of November, a guided tour in Portuguese on naturalism in painting will take place on November 9 at 6pm.

The programme will focus on the works of Silva Porto (1850-1893), Marques de Oliveira (1853-1927) and Henrique Pousão (1859-1884). The tour is completed with other artists who left their mark on the city of Porto in the first half of the 20th century.

In Portugal, in 1867, the Academies of Fine Arts began awarding scholarships to students abroad. Silva Porto (1850-1893) and Marques de Oliveira (1853-1927) were the first students in Paris.

They joined the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1873 and, in the forest of Barbizon, lived with a group of artists who followed open-air painting, focussing on the effects of light on the landscape.

Henrique Pousão also went to Paris in 1880. His paintings of roads and streets, courtyards, houses and aspects of Paris bear witness to his creative journey, which culminated in his stays in Rome and Capri.

His work, which reveals the boldness and talent of the young painter and his absolute interest in the values of the painting itself to the detriment of the themes or the narrative, was given, after his premature death, to the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes.

Columbano was the son of sculptor and painter Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro.

Years after completing his training (painter Miguel Ângelo Lupi and sculptor Simões de Almeida were his masters), he travelled to Paris, benefiting from a scholarship funded by King Consort Fernando II of Portugal, already the widower of Queen Maria II of Portugal.

On his return to Portugal, he joined the “Grupo do Leão”, which aimed to renew the aesthetics of compositions in the country’s art. His portraits of Ramalho Ortigão, Teófilo Braga, Eça de Queirós and Antero de Quental are famous from this period.

In 1901, he became a professor of historical painting at the Lisbon Academy of Fine Arts, where he had studied as a young man.

A group of artists and writers used to meet at the Leão d’Ouro brewery, which became known as the “Grupo do Leão”. This group, which would be immortalised in Columbano’s painting of the same title (pictured), and in which Silva Porto was considered the leader, included the painters of the “Lisbon naturalist generation”, José Malhoa, António Ramalho, João Vaz, Columbano, Moura Girão, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Ribeiro Cristino, Rodrigues Vieira and Cipriano Martins.

It was an opportunity for artists who shared a common desire to renew the dominant aesthetic concepts of the Portuguese art scene to get together and organise an annual exhibition of modern paintings.

Cover image: Unfinished self-portrait by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro. 1929
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro // © Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado

Image: Grupo de Leão. 1885
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro // © National Museum of Contemporary Art in Chiado

Together with the Garabit Viaduct, it is considered one of the greatest masterpieces by engineer Gustave Eiffel. At the time of its inauguration, it was the bridge with the largest iron arch in the world.

In connection with this anniversary, we remind the exhibition “Entre Margens – Representações da Engenharia na Arte Portuguesa” (Between Margins – Representations of Engineering in Portuguese Art) (pictured) that the Soares dos Reis National Museum hosted in 2013, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Arrábida Bridge and the 100th anniversary of Edgar Cardoso’s birth, bringing together works by some of the most significant Portuguese artists.

In all, the exhibition included 140 paintings and installations by 61 artists, portraying numerous bridges and other emblematic works of Portuguese engineering and architecture, including Eduardo Viana’s oil on canvas “Ponte Maria Pia”, which can be seen at the Soares dos Reis National Museum.

The event was co-organised by the Faculties of Engineering (FEUP) and Fine Arts (FBAUP) of the University of Porto.

The second day of the colloquium will be dedicated to communications framed under the general theme of strange and foreign collections, which includes the paper An altar without worship: the Fernando de Castro House-Museum (Porto), by Ana Anjos Mântua and Vera Gonçalves.

According to the objectives stated by the organization, “it is from the perspective of the unexpected, the unusual and singular, the first vision still unrecognized, or the strangely familiar, that we propose to think together about the various forms of strangeness in art and collections. With this, we intend to review the historiography of art and the history of collections, in order to better understand how historians, critics, art theorists and collectors dealt with the strangeness placed on them or deliberately sought out”.

In this framework, the theme Strange and foreign collections proposes the presentation of studies on “strange” collections and collectors, whether due to the type of pieces collected or the way in which the collections were formed.

The collection of the Fernando de Castro House-Museum is made up of different collections gathered over several decades. It is mainly composed of religious art with erudite and popular representations, Portuguese naturalistic painting and decorative arts. Also noteworthy is an interesting group of caricatures and some books written by Fernando de Castro, collector, artist and poet.

The Fernando de Castro House-Museum has been managed by the Soares dos Reis National Museum since 1952.

Featuring different film and musical genres, from jazz to electronica, including traditional Portuguese music, this year the sessions will be held in emblematic locations in the cities of Leiria, Porto and Lisbon.

One of the main novelties of the edition is the inclusion of the Soares dos Reis National Museum in the list of chosen stages, and in Porto, the cycle will also pass through São Bento Railway Station, Cinema Trindade and Casa das Artes.

In total, 12 cineconcerts will be held, between November and December, in the seventh edition of the Salão Piolho cycle, an initiative of the Inatel Foundation that invites Portuguese musicians to create sound approaches to silent film classics.

This year’s edition begins with three shows in Leiria, on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of November, in a bet by Inatel to take the cycle further. In the Salão Piolho, which takes its name from the places where, in the past, cinema was shown, these classics are accompanied by soundtracks of Portuguese music, from folk, to traditional music, jazz and electronica.

Inferno – Dante’s Journey by António Carneiro is the result of a partnership between Lionesa Business Hub, Lionesa Group, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis and ASCIPDA – Associazione Socio-Culturale Italiana del Portogallo Dante Alighieri.

Based on the painter’s 42 drawings, this journey begins with the entry into Hell and culminates with the exit to Paradise, symbolized by majestic entrance and exit candles, highlighting our journey towards the final destination.

The installation consists of nine circles, each representing different stories and concepts in an eternal cycle of experiences and rebirth. A metaphor for human life, with a beginning, complexity and a point of arrival that is also a new beginning. The objective is to stimulate the Lionesa Business Hub community for a unique moment of reflection and decision.

This partnership between the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis and the Lionesa Business Hub is the result of a patronage protocol that the Lionesa Group signed with the Museum and which went towards the requalification of galleries in the Palácio dos Carrancas. This initiative reinforces the orientation towards cultural democracy, awakening to the themes of well-being through art and culture.

The access to the exhibition is free.

The Soares dos Reis National Museum presents, under the heading The Piece of the Month – The Public’s Choice, the oil on wood «Cancela Vermelha», by Silva Porto. The commented sessions take place on the 30th of August (1:30 pm) and the 31st of August (6:30 pm). Registration ongoing.

Red Gate
Silva Porto (1850-1893)
1878-1879
Oil on wood

The piece belonged to the collection of Conde do Ameal (Dr. Ayres de Campos) and was sold at the collection’s auction in 1921.

It is part of the Honório de Lima Donation (DHL), made in favor of the Porto City Council in 1941. Elisa Adelaide Bessa Lima, widow of Eduardo Honório de Lima, in compliance with her husband’s wishes, signed, with the Porto City Council, on May 17, 1941, a deed of donation of 21 paintings by Silva Porto.

The set of 21 works that constitute the Honório de Lima Donation were associated with the General Inventory of the Municipal Museum of Porto from 1938/39, the collection of which was deposited at the Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis in 1940/41.

António Carvalho da Silva Porto (1850 – 1893)

After completing his studies at the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, he left for Paris in 1873 on a state pension to study landscape painting. In France he painted in Barbizon, the mythical birthplace of Naturalism, and in Auvers he met Daubigny, one of the masters of the movement.

He exhibited at the Salon in 1876 and 1878. Settling in Rome, he traveled with Marques de Oliveira to various cities in Italy.

In 1879 he returned to the country. The landscapes he presented at the historic exhibition of the Sociedade Promotora das Belas-Artes in 1880 introduced the naturalist aesthetic to Portugal. Around him, a group of young painters gathered for the annual “Exhibitions of Modern Paintings”, which Columbano celebrated in 1885 with the collective portrait The Lion Group.

In the last years of his activity, he developed a painting of regional types and customs, which would be explored in a more exuberant way by Malhoa and Carlos Reis.

As part of the programme proposed for the month of November, a commented visit in Portuguese to the Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc. exhibition, dedicated to the theme “Poetry and Art Brut”, will take place on the 11th at 11am.

This visit aims to cross poetry and art brut through a read-aloud exercise. Between portraits and verses of the soul, the aim is to encourage visitors to go through what most unsettles them. We’ll be talking about Camilo Pessanha, Alejandra Pizarnik, Mário de Sá Carneiro, Adília Lopes and João Miguel Fernandes Jorge.

Maria Miguel Reis has a degree in History and a master’s degree in Literary, Cultural and Inter-Arts Studies from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. Her master’s thesis explores the relationship between poetry and cinema, based on the book Pickpocket, by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge. She is currently doing a professional internship at the Soares dos Reis National Museum and is very interested in the dialogue between literature and other arts.

Ana Mântua has a degree in History, specialising in Art History, and a postgraduate degree in Art, Heritage and Restoration from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. She has been the coordinator of the Casa-Museu Fernando de Castro in Porto since 2021. Previously, she coordinated the Anastácio Gonçalves House-Museum, researched and curated exhibitions at the Jerónimos Monastery/Belém Tower and the National Tile Museum. She is also the author of a series of scientific articles in the fields of heritage and collecting.

João Francisco Allen (1781-1848) was a merchant of English (more specifically Irish) origin, born in Viana do Castelo on 1 May 1781. The son of Duarte Guilherme Allen, the British consul in Viana do Castelo, he was decorated with the Order of the Tower and Sword for his bravery in the Peninsular War, for which he volunteered.

He was one of the promoters of the creation of the Crystal Palace, as well as Porto’s first bank, Banco Comercial.

He founded the Novo Museu Portuense or Allen Museum, the first private museum to have printed catalogues in Portugal (the first was published in 1853), and was a renowned art critic.

The extraordinary collection assembled by João Allen was bought after his death by the City Council, becoming part of the collection of the original Municipal Museum and today being deposited in the Soares dos Reis National Museum.