Three exhibitions, with rarely shown works from the Ilídio Pinho Collection, and pieces by artists Júlia Ventura and Josefina Ribeiro, open to the public, at the Arpad Szenes Museum – Vieira da Silva, in Lisbon.
“Irradiação Vieira” is the title of the exhibition with pieces from the Ilídio Pinho Foundation’s Collection, which includes 17 works by the artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992) rarely presented to the public, and is curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez. at the museum until 26 September this year.
The Ilídio Pinho Foundation’s collection is the result of a combination of acquisitions that the founder made throughout his life and the action developed between 2006 and 2008, through an Arts Council that included sculptor Alberto Carneiro, curator Miguel von Hafe Pérez and Alcino Cardoso, more connected to the field of management, but knowledgeable in the arts.
This exhibition presents a perspective of the collection that covers a time span from 1913 to 2009, highlighting the seventeen works by Vieira da Silva rarely presented to the public.
“In the absence of a museum where one can permanently glimpse what has been produced in national art in the last hundred years, exhibitions like the one now being presented allow for an approximation, albeit fragmented and authorial, to a reality in continuous questioning. Concepts such as the of house or atelier can have different expressions in Amadeo, Eloy, Vieira da Silva, Cabrita or in the younger Bruno Pacheco and André Cepeda”, indicates a text from the museum.
On the other hand, the collection also reveals a selection of works, inspired by the representation of nature, developments in abstract languages, in their multiple intentions, unexpected encounters of more recent creators and authors such as Isabel Simões and Rui Moreira.
Works by Almada Negreiros, Álvaro Lapa, Angelo de Sousa, António Sena, Carla Filipe, Catarina Leitão, Daniel Barroca, Dominguez Alvarez, Eduardo Batarda, Eduardo Viana, Fernando Brito, Francisco Queirós, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Helena Almeida, Jorge Pinheiro, Jorge Queiroz, José Barrias, Julião Sarmento, Júlio Pomar, Marta Soares, Miguel Ângelo Rocha, Nikias Skapinakis, Paula Rego, Sarah Affonso, Sónia Almeida, Susanne Themlitz and Vera Mota are part of this selection.
Another exhibition that opens at the museum on the same day is “Going Against – Júlia Ventura”, about the artist born in 1952, who has been developing, since the late 1970s, “a consistent and rigorous work on identification and the visible”.
“Her work takes photography as a ‘recurring medium’, but it is not limited to the domain of its limit conventions, overflowing and involving its problems in other media”, points out the museum.
In “Going Against”, she brought together a set of works from different periods, “so that the unusual proximity and relationship produce new recognitions of these images”, each one manifesting an enigma.
“The proximity of one image to another — in physical space and through memory — sometimes establishes identifications through the repetition of certain aspects. It is not a full encounter through an identity common to the images, but a laborious one and the unstable approximation that our eyes exercise between them, due to the invisibility that goes from one photograph to another”, describes the museum about the artist who graduated in painting, at the Lisbon Superior School of Fine Arts.
Júlia Ventura began to individually exhibit her photographic works in the early 1980s, between Lisbon and Amsterdam, and contact with the international art scene during this period was crucial to the uniqueness of her work.
Another artist, Josefina Ribeiro, born in 1962, will have her work on display at the Casa-Atelier Vieira da Silva until September 12, a set of imaginary animals, in three dimensions, made in bronze.
“It was as a plastic arts teacher that the artist Josefina Ribeiro rediscovered the joy and vivacity of creation. Very inspired by the golden phase of childhood, the age at which children already know how to express themselves and still retain all their spontaneity, the artist is gone expanding into cutouts and collages, always trying to escape reason”, describes the Vieira da Silva Museum in a text about the exhibition “Animais da nova era”.
After the collages, the drawings appeared, “which kept growing until it was no longer possible to work the stain, and each animal is born almost in a single brushstroke, where there is no room for great consideration”.
With the drawing, the artist needed to get to know these animals even better. “It was necessary for them to incarnate.” Thus, they gained three dimensions, in different materials, until they were fixed in bronze.
“Animals of the New Age” are “animals that are born from shadow and light”, reads the presentation sheet of the exhibition. “As human as animals. They all have a name. They are true, creatures of love and peace.”
The three exhibitions are inaugurated on Wednesday at the Arpad-Szenes Museum – Vieira da Silva, in Lisbon, and can be visited until September this year.
@ RTP
