Portraits of artists show “isolation painful” during the dictatorship – the Observer

A collection of 62 portraits made by Fernando Lemos of the protagonists of the intellectual world Portuguese, in the mid-TWENTIETH century, exposed to from this Wednesday at the Berardo Museum, shows the "isolation painful" created by the dictatorship.

"Fernando Lemos: a collective portrait, in Portugal, at the end of the 40" is the title of this exposure a Portuguese artist living since 1953 in Brazil, where he began to reside due to the opposition to the Salazar regime, by obtaining the nationality a few years later.

on A guided tour to journalists, by exposure, Pedro Lapa, artistic director of the museum, stressed that this set of pictures, as captured by Fernando Lemos:

Shows the specific means of writers, actors and visual artists who have lived in a period of the most depressive in the History of the country".

The poet Alberto de Lacerda, the painter António Dacosta, the actor Jacinto Ramos, the writer Jorge de Sena, the historian José-Augusto França, the writer José Cardoso Pires, the painter Marcelino Vespeira, the poet and artist Mário Cesariny, the painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and her husband Arpad-Szénes, are some of the ones portrayed in the work of Fernando Lemos.

it Was the end of the post-Second World War. In Portugal, the dictatorial regime hardened, and the insulation on what were these artists and intellectuals was painful," said Pedro Lapa, about the circumstances in which they lived.

Many of them eventually emigrate, or be expatriated, as was the case of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, whom Oliveira Salazar has not granted the nationality, and the artist would ask for the French nationality.

Fernando Lemos eventually emigrate after the creation of these images, "that allow you to make a collective portrait of a certain generation traumatized," said Pedro Lapa.

Painter, graphic artist and photographer, Fernando Lemos, who is now 90 years old, while living in Brazil for decades, continued to show his work in Portugal.

in This exhibition, which is inaugurated this Wednesday in the Museum Berardo Collection, are displayed portraits made between 1949 and 1952.

On the other exhibition, which is also inaugurated this Wednesday, at the Berardo Museum, with works of nine artists, among which Rui Chafes, Ângela Ferreira and Helena Almeida, the artistic director of the museum, and curator of the two shows, said that, in the choice of plays, sought to "create tensions between aesthetic diversified".

"Visual & Vision — Portuguese Art in the Berardo Collection II" will still count with the works of Joaquim Bravo, José Barrias’, José Luís Neto, Miguel Palma, Pedro Barateiro and Pedro Cabrita Reis.

The works in painting, sculpture, video and photography, of nine Portuguese artists, will occupy three rooms of the museum.

I’m very happy to put these works in dialogue, to create webs of relationships between artists of several generations, with works that are quite different", he pointed.

This exhibition reveals the artistic practices, questions and critical views of these artists, seeking to "set some of the wires between the understanding of visuality and perspective on the world".

The works assembled in this exhibition bring into question the limits supposed by regimes of visuality referred to, and seek to give place to the possibility of the happening of another vision of the image and the world", according to Pedro Lapa.

"Fernando Lemos: a collective portrait, in Portugal, at the end of the years 40" and "Visuality & Vision — Portuguese Art in the Berardo Collection II" were inaugurated this Wednesday at 19.00, and will be patent until 31 December of this year.