In a personal vision, revealing her spirituality, Aurélia de Souza transports the biblical passage of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth (Lk.1:36-56) to her workspace and invites us to contemplate another narrative where the sacred and the human come together in a unique way.
A former student at the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes, Maria Aurélia Martins de Souza (1866-1922) is essentially recognised for her unconventional and avant-garde painting, but also for her drawing, illustration and photography.
Born in Valparaíso (Chile) on 13 June 1866, she settled in Porto at the age of 3 with her parents, Portuguese emigrants to Latin America. It was in Invicta that he began his artistic apprenticeship with private drawing and painting lessons from Caetano Moreira da Costa Lima. At the age of 27, she entered the Academia Portuense de Belas-Artes, which she attended between 1893 and 1898.
In 1899, Aurélia de Souza travelled to Paris for three years to complete the courses taught by Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant at the Julien Academy. It was during this period that she painted her famous “Self-Portrait” (1900), which is now in the collection of the Soares dos Reis National Museum.