The exhibition Modern glances. The portrait in painting, sculpture drawing (1910-19150), deals with the aesthetics of the portrait and establishes a programmatic continuity with the previous exhibition, Dilemma of being and appearing: the portrait in painting, photography and sculpture (1850-1916). It is important to mention the crossing of eyes and the taste for pictorial frameworks in photography, as well as the notion of photographic realism in painting, sculpture and drawing, through specific photographic enlargements, by the authors San Payo, Franklin Figueiredo, António Paixão and Varela Pécurto.
This exhibition lists artistic attitudes and testimonies of novelties, breaking with tradition, since 1850, beginning of the MNAC collection. The Portuguese romantic generation also had this seduction, this fantasy of metamorphosing the current into eternal, by constituting itself as new. For this reason, some works by 19th century authors who are confronted with pieces by artists of modern generations, such as Columbano and Mário Eloy, Alfredo de Andrade and José Resende, Faria and Maia and Jorge Vieira, are represented.
In five different centers and around 80 works, different understandings of modernity emerge, in the first decades of the 20th century, rarely exhibited, by Eduardo Viana, Carlos Botelho, Paulo Ferreira, José Tagarro, Querubim Lapa. Without worrying about chronological divisions, the desire to register identities, capture expressions and even a fantasistic poetics can be seen, but also the importance of revealing the representative models of social changes and the dialogue between the portrait and the surrounding spaces, between the figure and the landscape, from 1910 to 1950.
Maria de Aires Silveira
From May 18th to February 27th, 2022.
About 80 works and 45 authors: painting, sculpture, drawing, organized in five exhibition centers:
Identities and portrait.
The expression of the portrait
A poetics of the portrait
Social involvement of identity
Figure / Landscape dialogues
Exhibition held with the patronage of the Millenium Bcp.
