The mythical work ‘Café’ by the Brazilian artist Candido Portinari (1903-1962) will be at the center of an exhibition dedicated to the artist that the Museum of Neo-Realism, in Vila Franca de Xira, will inaugurate on October 20.
‘Candido Portinari in Portugal’ is the title of this exhibition that takes place during the celebrations of the 11th anniversary of the museum, and will remain until March 03, 2019, evoking “the passages and the presence of this greater name of Brazilian painting” in Portugal.
The main highlight of this exhibition will be the work ‘Café’, donated by the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and returning to Portugal 78 years after being first exhibited in 1940 at the Pavilhão do Brasil in ‘ Exhibition of the Portuguese World ‘, in Belém.
Portinari, one of the most popular painters in Brazil, is part of the original modernism. He stood out as a social painter, “worried about the poverty, the difficulties, the pain” of his country, which showed in strong colors, as the biography of the “Portinari Project” emphasizes, but went beyond the initial academicism, linking the painting each visual communication.
This exhibition project at the Museum of Neo-Realism, curated by the scientific director of the museum, Raquel Henriques da Silva, and Luísa Duarte Santos, presents other relevant works by Candido Portinari, bringing together all that exist in Portugal of the painter.
The intention of the curatorship is that, around ‘Café’, the works “allow to celebrate the foreign artist who has more works in Portugal”, and to remember its proximity to Portuguese neo-realist ideas.
‘Candido Portinari in Portugal’ presents paintings and drawings provided by the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Chiado Museum (Lisbon), Soares dos Reis National Museum (Porto), Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), Casa da Achada – Centro Mário Dionísio ), Ferreira de Castro Museum (Sintra) and Millennium BCP Foundation (Lisbon), as well as documentary collections of the Neo-Realism Museum (Vila Franca de Xira).
Last year, two of Portinari’s most important works, rescued from a fire in 1949, were exhibited at the Chiado Museum.
The works were titled ‘Chorinho’ and ‘Cavalo-marinho’, and were inserted in the exhibition ‘A Mano-de-ojos-azul’ by Cândido Portinari, curated by Maria de Aires Silveira, which was patent from October to December in that museum.
These two panels belonged to a set of eight, musical theme, belonging to Radio Tupi in Rio de Janeiro, and were the only survivors of a fire that occurred in the station in 1949.
The exhibition ‘Candido Portinari in Portugal’, in the Museum of Neo-Realism in Vila Franca de Xira, has the High Sponsorship of the President of the Republic and is inaugurated on October 20, Saturday, at 4:00 p.m., with the presence of the president of the City Hall of Vila Franca de Xira, Alberto Mesquita, the director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, Monica Xexéo, and the son of Candido Portinari, Professor João Candido Portinari.
The statement from the Museum of Neo-Realism recalls that it has dedicated its 11 years of existence to the investigation and dissemination of the neorealist movement.
Over the years, in the current installations, designed by the architect Alcino Soutinho, “networks of contacts and collaborations with curators and universities have been exponentially multiplied, bringing new perspectives on the neorealist movement and its various artistic expressions.”
The Museum of Neo-Realism, which is managed by the Vila Franca de Xira Town Hall, is dedicated to the study and divulgation of this literary movement, “has been promoting a continuous practice of investigation around its heritage, betting simultaneously , in programmatic contents of critical rigor and interpretive amplitude “.
Since October 2007, the museum has produced an average of ten bio-bibliographic, documentary and plastic arts exhibitions per year, most of which are documented by the edition of catalogs.
