it was among the agents who helped the Portuguese arts to transit towards the contemporary. Founder and director of Valentim de Carvalho Gallery and first director of the Berardo Museum in Sintra, Maria Nobre Franco died this morning in Cascais with cancer. He was 76.
The funeral is today at Estrela Basilica from 18h. Tomorrow at 13:30, also is celebrated in the Basilica Star Mass before the departure of the funeral for Messejana, Alentejo – his native village.
Degree in Classical Philology and Philosophy of Art, Maria Nobre Franco was married to Rui Valentim de Carvalho, the Portuguese music industry pioneer who died in late 2013. It was one of the publisher spaces, at the Palace of Alcáçovas, who founded one of the main art galleries in the 1980s and early 1990s – has been open for a decade between 1984 and 1995
During this period, when in Lisbon. few spaces were devoted exclusively to contemporary art, the gallery had “a huge and extremely important activity,” recalls painter Jorge Martins.
Close friend, still before April 25, Jorge Martins was a of gallery artists, along with names of generations that came back as René Bértholo, Joaquim Bravo and Palolo. But Jorge Martins emphasizes in particular the visibility given to those who were then brand new names, like José Pedro Croft, Peter Calapez and Rui Sanches. A crossing of generations that would also mark the direction of the first Berardo Museum and the gallery was made with “breadth and grandeur”, including through catalogs editing.
“Mary knew do this, “said Jorge Martins,” was an exceptionally sensitive, generous, affectionate. A woman full of qualities and a very large capacity for action. ”
They are words repeated by Pedro Calapez, which recalls the comings group to Arco, the contemporary art fair in Madrid, at the time virtually the only platform of internationalization of Portuguese art. “.. The trips to Arco were always a party was a person of a particular softness and generosity out of the ordinary”
It was in 1997 that Maria Nobre Franco assumed the leadership of the Sintra Museum of Modern Art – Berardo Collection , a position he left only in 2008, when creating the current Berardo Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon.
As director, gave visibility to local artists, both young Now more as long and proven career, showing his work alongside foreign artists represented in the collection, says the critic Alexandre Pomar on your blog. Among the exhibitions organized include, for example, dedicated to the Portuguese Rui Chafes and Júlio Pomar, the Irish Michael Craig-Martin, the Spanish Susana Solano and Luso-Brazilian Fernando Lemos.
Maria Nobre Franco was also a collector of Portuguese art, bringing together such disparate names like Julião Sarmento, Xana, Álvaro Lapa, Helena Almeida and Rui Chafes.
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