Almada Negreiros temporary exhibition at Calouste Gulbenkian Museum - The 19th of March 2017

 

 

To be modern is just like being elegant

It is not a way of dressing, but a way of being

To be modern is not to use the modern caligraphy

But to be the genuine discoverer of the new. 

 

José Almada Negreiros - 1927 Madrid Conference on Drawing

 

 

 

 

 

Almada Negreiros has always had a special place in my artistic preferences since an early age and if I question myself as to what really attracted me in those pencil drawing copies I first came across at my grandmother's I feel I would say it was the movement they conveyed ... I could almost see them coming out of the paper and that undoubtedly impacted my imagination. It wasn't but much later that I started reading some of his essays and a few years later came across his oil paintings and ceramic wall compositions. 

 

 

 

The very well organised temporary exhibition I've been to at Calouste Gulbenkian's Museum over the weekend brings together most of his works and is undeniably a must.

Nude (Painting for the Bristol Club) - 1926 oil on canvas.

Untitled (paintings for Alfaiataria Cunha tailor's, Lisboa) - 1913 oil on canvas.

 

 

Bathers (painting for Brasileira Café ) - 1925 Oil on canvas

 

 

 

 

 

 

1923 untitled watercolour on paper (left). 1931 untitled Indian Ink on paper (right).

1921 untitled Italian ink on paper.

Undated graphite on paper drawings.

Untitled (Harlequin, ballerina and horse) - 1953 oil on canvas (left). Untitled (Theme for a tapestry) - c.1954 gouache on cardboard (right).

 

 

 

 

 

Untitled (theme for tapestry for the Ritz Hotel) - 1959 oil on canvas.

 

 

 

 

 

Study for stained glass wall for the mortuary chapel in Our Lady of Fátima Church - 1938 gouache on paper glued on wood.

Study for stained glass wall for the Chorus of Our Lady of Fátima Church (rejected version) - c.1938

Study for panel mural (destroyed) for the Restauradores Post Office - 1940

(Commissioned painting to represent the revue Orpheu) Portrait of Fernando Pessoa - 1964 oil on canvas.

Reading Orpheu - 1954 Gouache, watercolour and ballpoint on paper

Study for a fresco mural for Diário de Notícias newspaper premises - 1939 gouache on cardboard.

 

 

 

Gouache on platex Tapestry exhibited at the Comptoir Suisse at the 1957  Lausanne Fair.

Oil on plywood study for the Auditing Court - 1974

Untitled graphite and aniline dye on paper

Portrait of Júlia Novais - 1927 gouache on paper (left). Portrait of Maria Madalena Moraes da Silva Amado with an inscription "Doux comme le violet, fou comme le vert"- 1921 watercolour on paper (right) 

1924 untitled gouache on paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1922 green ink on paper (left). Undated watercolour on paper (right).

 

 

Fish seller - 1924 watercolour on paper (left). 1922 untitled watercolour on paper (right). 

 

 

 

 

 

Untitled gouache on paper study (left). Weedpicker - 1936 oil on canvas (right)

 

 

 

(To be continued)

 

 

The latest book I have read ...

I have always been keen on reading travel diaries particularly related to countries I have either been to or feel I will travel to some day. Whether they have been written recently or sometime ago has never determined my choice, once gettting to know a place may also imply trying to get to know what it was like before it started being "explored" by adventurers of all sorts.

 

 

 

Annemarie Schwarzenbach is a name I had never heard of, neither the fellow writer companion she travelled with in her Ford from Geneva through to Afghanistan in 1939, Ella Maillart and whose odissey reflections I have had the privilege of reading over the weekend.

 

 

 

 

Her memoir episodes as described in All the roads are open: The Afghan Journey are somewhat captivating because of the lyrical form she has adopted. Despite being a personal account it is not deprived of the epoch's historical and social context, which in itself provides an indepth  and a rather profound description of the surrounding atmosphere.

 

 

 

I have loved it so much that I now feel tempted to further explore certain aspects of its author's life, once the introduction to the book provides very few. As always I couldn't help writing down some extracts ...







" I can't always tell memories from dreams and often mistake dreams coming to life in colours, smells, sudden associations, with the eerie secret certainty of a past life from which time and space divide me no differently and no better than a light sleep in the early hours".



" The journey that many may take for an airy dream, an enticing game, liberation from daily routine, freedom as such, is in reality merciless, a school that accustoms us to the inevitable course of events, to encounters and losses, blow upon blow."



"We cannot really love what we haven't seen with our own eyes or held in our arms, even nostalgia isn't but a form of solitude which exhales and drains itself of its substance". 

 

 

 

 

Note: The last quotation has been freely adapted from the Portuguese translation of its original German version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News from afar ...

I've been sent a few photos which for moments made me think back to Cape Verde, two being Glorinha's showing me one page of the colouring book and trying to read a stick on book on the other one, both of which I bought for her.

The other set of two photos are of Dulcilinda and Velker, whose father now collected the presents he didn't manage to collect within the period Noëlle and I stayed in Cape Verde and whose picture was of utmost importance for the "godparents". 

 

 

Technology makes it easier now to be in touch with my Cape Verdian friends, despite the fact that in the village it is not always possible ... but there's nothing like having news from afar ... and feel happy ... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latest film I have watched ...

"No man is free who is not master of himself" - Seretse Khama

Based on a true-life relationship between Sir Seretse Khama, an African chieftain from the former Bechuanalan Protectorate (Botswana) and a white British woman, Ruth Williams he met while studying in London in the late forties A United Kingdom is quite an interesting film, in the sense that it touches a variety of issues from inter-racial loveand political tension through to tenacity and decision taking based on love.

 

With sensational performances from Rosamund Pike and Seretse Oyelowo, this film is "inspiring and educational. More than just a love story" and definitely worth watching.