Around seven thousand people have already visited the Exhibition Portreto de la Animo Art Brut Etc., at the Soares dos Reis National Museum.
Inaugurated on July 13, the exhibition has aroused the interest of hundreds of visitors in this first month of presentation to the public.
It is 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 Art Brut in the world.
Comprising around 150 works by 99 artists, the exhibition also includes several pieces from the Soares dos Reis National Museum collection, placed in dialogue with pieces from the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, such as the Reliquary bust of St Pantaleon; the Mortuary Mask of Soares dos Reis, by José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes; Spittoon, by Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro and the oil Mother and Daughter, by Sarah Afonso; among others.
Initiated in the 1980s, the Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, on deposit at the Centro de Arte Oliva, comprises a large collection of works of Brut Art/Outsider Art, being one of the most important and extensive private collections in the world and counting on a large number of recognized authors.
Inspired by the journey initiated by Jean Dubuffet, a pioneer in the collection of these artistic productions, the two collectors have put together a set of works that become reports of the unconscious and involuntarily assume 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 brings together a nucleus of works focused on portraits and self-portraits.
The portraits 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 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.
It will be open to the public until November 12, 2023.