The 90s     João Paulo Feliciano, The Big Red Puff Sound Site, 1994. Colchão em oleado vermelho, cheio com esferovite; 2 lâmpadas fluorescentes azuis; 6 auscultadores suspensos do tecto; leitor de cd. Banda Sonora: "Teenage Drool", Tina And The Top Ten. 5 x 5 m. (dim. da sala). Col. PCR Pedro Falcão. Within the international context the 90s would begin with a political turnabout expressed mainly in a critical attitude towards the neo-expressionist "back to painting" movement that essentially characterised the 80s. Although within the country there were some attempts to adhere to this change of discourse, even explicitly so by a few groups of artists, the truth is that the dissociation between what one is defending and postulating and the form through which one does it was quite evident. In other words, within the international scene the refusal to "objectify" the work of art was naturally expressed through a dematerialization, opening up thus a decade of a trend of non-objectual works of art whose forms of manifestation can be seen in a wider usage of video or video-installation and in new attitudes, namely a more stressed ethnographic stance with which the artists deal from now on with the production, the distribution and the consumption of the works of art. Actually, the paradigm of the artist while an eth­nographer was an attempt to rewrite the Benjaminian discourse of the "artist as a producer", replacing the Other by a cultural Other, whose alterity is defined not through socio-economical constraints but rather through identity terms. However, this Other under­stood as a cultural identity has never existed in Portugal, a country that became familiarized with the concept of "proletarian" solely in the 70s, exactly at the moment when Alvin Toffler's "third wave" made the very notion of work obsolete. This is also in a country in which, notwithstanding its colonial memory, there is, to this day, an absence of its discussion and in which history teaching follows strategies of mystification. Given the fact Portugal never had to deal with a really overpowering immigration wave or that it never had a really substantial feminist movement, Portugal remained in its isolation towards the outside, practically detached to the shock waves that rang out throughout the 20th century. Also due to the longevity of Salazar's regime, Portugal did not experience a period of its own modernity. Therefore, it will come as no surprise the fact that post-modernity entered its borders as an imported product.   José Loureiro, Minutos, 1996/97. Óleo sobre tela, 194 x 261 cm. Col. Banco Privado Português. Vitor Branco.   Pedro Cabrita Reis, Rio, 1992 (Documental). Mármore, 255 x 630 x 2530 cm. Col. do artista. Dirk Pauwels. At a national level, the decade was inaugurated with the 10 Contemporâneos exhibition (10 Contemporaries, Serralves, 1992) curated by Alexandre Melo which brought together 10 artists (Gerardo Burmester, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Pedro Calapez, Pedro Casqueiro, Rui Chafes, José Pedro Croft, Pedro Portugal. Pedro Proença, Rui Sanches and Julião Sarmento) presented as the main figures of the national artistic scene at the turn of the 90s. In the following year with the more specific goal of shaping an image that would brand the decade, the Imagens para os anos 90 (Images for the 90s, Serralves, 1993) was presented, curated by Fernando Pernes and Miguel von Hafe Pérez. For the first time a group of emerging artists was gathered, Miguel Palma, Paulo Mendes, João Paulo Feliciano, Fernando Brito, João Louro, António Olaio, João Tabarra, Carlos Vidal, Manuel Valente Alves, Daniel Blaufuks, Miguel Ângelo Rocha, Joana Rosa, Rui Serra and Sebastião Resende and others, amongst whom were some of the names that would shape the Portuguese art of the 90s.   Fernanda Fragateiro Instalação na Sala Sul, Museu de História Natural, Lisboa, 1990. Madeira, gesso, cimento, tijolo e alumínio, 25 x 10 x 5 m. Cortesia da artista. Pedro Letria. Ana Vidigal, s/título, 1991. Técnica mista sobre tela, 180 x 200 cm. Col. Centro de Arte / Col. Manuel de Brito. Mário Soares.   Augusto Alves da Silva, Que bela família, 1992. Série de 6 fotografias, Fujicrome, 75 x 93 cm. (cada). Cortesia do artista. Cortesia do artista.   This exhibition triggered a polemic that would cross the whole decade. To wit, two antagonistic forms to read the artistic practice: one associated to a more ahistorical, essentialist attitude and the other more alert towards the issues and the problems related to the social and cultural circumstances, that is to say, more engaged in an interventionist and compromised artistic practice.   The very fact that these points of view would be­come intensified are nothing but an example of the peripheral condition in which Portugal was and which it would be very difficult to relinquish. After all, it was (re)producing in Portugal a discussion that had occurred in Europe during the 30s. Meanwhile, in response to the mentioned dynamics brought by alterity, this decade would be defined by strategies of rupture, expressed in manifold ways: in the aesthetical, artistic context, in a stricter sense; in the generational context, with the generation of the 90s taking a stand against that of the 80s; and in the institutional context, with the students from Ar.Co (that would be rekindled by Manuel Castro Caldas as the new director) competing against the ones from FBAUL. Nonetheless, it is worth to mention that this dichotomist structure was only made possible due to the absence of a real alterity, a structure that ultimately disguises the absence of a real debate and of a real dia­lectics of production-reception.   On the other hand, and for reasons of pure sociological order, such as the shortening of career opportunities, the obstacles to become internationalized, and the market's debility, the 90s lived in the paradox of a non­correspondence between intention and action. This is shown by the fact that the artists never really did aban­don an objectual production. They even strengthened that practice through an institutional scale, i.e., the "museological scale", which reflects an attentive, accurate conscience on the existence and the drive towards articulating one's expression with specific "consumer audiences" and drawn by the new public institutions. This is a circumstance that is strengthened by a wider social phenomenon: in the wake of the 80s economic growth, Portugal witnessed the emergence of a new moneyed class, whose recent entry into a higher social status will be expressed through an extraordinary appetite for products that give prestige to the owners. If generally speaking this is a motivation for production the other side of the coin is that is also a conditioning factor, given the fact it acts out a demand for conventionality that is quite distant from experimentalist gratuitous actions, leaving no context whatsoever as to a legitimizing discourse.   Daniel Blaufuks, Auto-Retrato (Cérebro), da série O Livro do Desassossego, 1996. Duratrans e negatoscópio, 46 x 132 x 15 cm. (3 elementos). Cortesia do artista. Cortesia do artista. Carlos Nogueira, Chão de Cal, projecto 1992, realização 1994. Madeira, ferro, cimento, cal, luz e som dos passos, 24 m. x 9m x 4,20 m. Museu de História Natural / Sala do Veado. Col. do artista. Carlos Nogueira. Thus, and to a certain extent even against the most visible currents of the international scenes, the Portuguese artists that engaged their artistic practices in a more political positioning do so more in terms of the expressed content of their works. In this group, one may mention as examples the production of people such as Paulo Mendes, Pedro Cabral Santo or the duo Entertainment Co. (João Louro and João Tabarra). Most of these works are clearly objectual works where the plasticity is concerned; therefore, and ultimately, they reinstate the notion of art as a marketable product, notwithstanding its strong political stance and themes.   Rui Chafes, A Manhã IV, 1992/93. Ferro, 39 x 37 x 75 cm. Col. Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento. Laura Castro Caldas e Paulo Cintra.         Ana Jotta, Roger, 1995. Toalheiro mecânico desactivado, toalha bordada, 78 x 37 x 21 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP José Manuel Costa Alves.   In this sense, a large part of the Portuguese art produced in the first half of the 90s seems to be entangled in the paradox of a cynical, Warhol-like poise that nevertheless also avows a more critical, subversive, Brecht-like stance. However, it is at this conjecture that we must indicate two factors that should not go unnoticed. On the one hand the whole of the production of the 90s seems to be walking through the fine line between a clear critical stance and reiterative exploits. We may say that this hindrance, this appropriating of so-called imperialist signs but without transforming them into performative, useful tools, is something that we can see everywhere. Retrospectively, we come to understand that, the agents' conquests notwithstanding, such a broader social arrangement is quite conditioning to its reading. Appropriation does not mean the same thing in the 90s than it did in the 30s. On the other hand the decade's neo-conceptual wave generated a misun­derstanding where the works' legibility was concerned. By postulating a certain hegemony of the subject, the perception of its other levels of meaning were some what obscured. This would be a problem far more felt in countries such as Portugal, whose peripheral role made it more vulnerable to information deficits or to a weak management of information, reproducing thus these hegemonic tendencies.   It is also worth noticing that the artists that have adopted an attitude which politicizes the artworks' form over its content, its technique over its subject, are the same ones whose personal and professional experiences are extended across the national borders, namely Júlia Ventura, João Penalva and Ângela Ferreira. It is through these artists that we see a certain continuity with the previous generation represented not only by themselves but by artists such as António Olaio, Ana Jotta or Helena Almeida, not to mention its rooting in the 70s via Ernesto de Sousa.   Returning to a chronological order, we must be mindful that Imagens para os Anos 90 was preceded by another exhibition that had been held at the Convento de São Francisco in Beja and in which the Portuguese artists João Paulo Feliciano and Carlos Vidal and the Spanish Pedro Romero and Siméon Sáiz presented their Manifesto, claiming for a politicised alternative to the Portuguese art of the early 90s. Also within the frame work of such a discourse, Jorge Castanho organised in the old Metalúrgica Alentejana, also in Beja, in 1995, the exhibition Espectáculo, Exílio, Deriva, Disseminação: um projecto em torno de Guy Debord (Spectacle, Exile, Dérive, Dis­semination: a project on and about Guy Debord) with works by Fernando Brito, Carlos Vidal, João Felino, Paulo Mendes, João Tabarra, João Louro, Miguel Palma and Entertainment Co.   Although Portugal is still a peripheral country today, we cannot forget that it is also at this point that a series of new factors initiates a slow change of pace. As soon as 1993 an exhibition would introduce a whole new set of emergent artists to the Portuguese audiences, a set that would mark profoundly the international scene. We are referring to the exhibition titled Walter Benjamin's Briefcase, which was integrated in the 2nd Jornadas de Arte Contemporânea (in Porto) organised by João Fernandes. The exhibition was curated by Andrew Renton who presented some of the British artists that would become central and known as the world-famous Young British Artists (YBA): Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland, Graham Gussin and Jane & Louise Wilson, among many others.   A number of curators and institutions would keep up an effort through divulgation, partially bridging the gap between Portugal and the main European centres. We should also mention Miguel von Hafe Pérez, João Fernandes, Pedro Lapa, Delfim Sardo, Isabel Carlos and Jürgen Bock.   Ângela Ferreira, Portugal dos Pequenitos, 1995. 1 caixa de luz vertical (alumínio, plexiglass, vinil, lâmpadas; 20 x 42 x 180 cm), 1 escultura (madeira, PVC, mangueira; 850 x 120 x 80 cm), 1 plano do parque (papel, cor; 45 x 40 cm), 1 desenho (grafite sobre papel; 25 x 120 cm). Col. Banco Privado Português. Ângela Ferreira.   Miguel Palma, Ecossistema, 1995. Casulo em mica insuflada por ventilador, focos, ferro, alumínio, tubagens de ventilação, acrílico, temporizador, Kits de casas e fábricas à escala 1/100, 210 x 210 x 450 cm. Col. Institut d´Art Contemporain FRAC Rhôn. DR/ Cortesia do Artista. Isabel Carlos was the curator of the exhibition Depois de Amanhã (After Tomorrow) within the framework of the 1994 European Capital of Culture in Lisbon, which was held at the then, recently opened Centro Cultural de Belém. In the same venue, not longer after, an equally important event would be presented: Múltiplas Dimensões (Multiple Dimensions). Pedro Lapa begins at the Museu do Chiado a whole programme of exhibitions entitled Interferências (Interferences), which from 1996 onwards presented projects by artists such as Miguel Palma, Augusto Alves da Silva, Gillian Wearing, Jimmie Durham, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen and Stan Douglas. Deeply assimilated in the spirit of their times, these few iniciatives are islands of contemporaneity, as it were, in Portugal, by forwarding visions and tendencies that would shape the Portuguese scene to come.   Xana, Lar Doce Lar no Quarto 4, 1994. Pintura acrílica sobre MDF, 182 x 276 x 4 cm. Col. do artista. DR/ Cortesia Culturgest. Xana, Lar Doce Lar no Quarto 5, 1994. Pintura acrílica sobre MDF, 183 x 275 x 5 cm. Col. Mário Martins. DR/ Cortesia Culturgest. The outset of the 90s, with the first Gulf War, was one of generalised crises and economic recession. In this context, a new wave of galleries - Alda Cortez, Graça Fonseca and Palmira Suso - whose projects had begun slightly earlier, found themselves in a particularly difficult economic situation. Throughout the 90s, some of the most renowned galleries of the previous decade closed down, such as the Nasoni Gallery (a victim of a serious financial predicament), and the Valentim de Carvalho Gallery. The Hugo Lapa Gallery, which would substitute it, would also close down in 1997 alongside Alda Cortez and Graça Fonseca galleries. Meanwhile, another group of galleries, more prone to the actual market demands and with a more eclectic stance, stressing far more economic efficiency than cultural legitimation concerns, increasingly assume the leading roles of the scene. We should name two galleries in Porto, Fernando Santos and Quadrado Azul, along with a group of others that include André Viana (which would also eventually close), Canvas (replaced by the Graça Brandão Gallery) and Presença. However, there is a large contrast between the generalised closing down of galleries in Lisbon and what would occur in Porto, which becomes the main centre of galleries in the country during the late 90s. One finds in the northern city galleries such as Pedro Oliveira, a Módulo Gallery delegation and Zen Gallery, a sort of franchise of III Gallery. Suffice to say, in Portugal, these three galleries are the only ones that kept up their dynamic work they had shown in the previous decades.   Miguel Soares, Untitled (VR Trooper), 1996. Chapa zincada, acrílico, turfa irlandesa, relva artificial, VR Trooper, base rotativa, strobe-light, detector de movimento, 130 x 250 x 250 cm. Greenhouse Display, Estufa Fria, Lisboa. Col. Ivo Martins. DR/ Cortesia do artista. Pedro Tudela, S/título da série Rastos, 1997. Bobines de fita magnética e metais variados, dim. variáveis. Vista da instalação na Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, Vila Nova de Famalicão. Col. Fundação de Serralves. ZM. Beginning in 1992, Lisbon created an alternative map, due to the creation of the ZDB Gallery, whose role would be central for the consolidation of the paths of many of the artists that would appeal throughout the decade. In 1992, we witness also the emergence of an alternative to the artistic education offered by both FBAUL and Ar.Co, with the creation of the School for Visual Arts Maumaus. This school would later on be under the direction of Jürgen Bock and would become the sole responsible for the formation of a whole, new ar­tistic trend, blatantly centre-European and well-versed in the concept of "Platform Art". That same year Pedro Cabrita Reis was invited by the Kassel Documenta and he opens an anthological exhibition of his work at Calouste Gulbenkian's Centre of Modern Art.   Miguel Soares, Untitled (VR Trooper) (pormenor) DR/ Cortesia do artista.   In 1993, a self organised artists' group follows the footsteps of their British predecessors and takes on decisions relative to exhibition strategies. Among others, we have Paulo Carmona, Pedro Cabral Santo, Tiago Baptista and Paulo Mendes. After their first presentation with Set Up, held at the Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, they would keep up a consequential programme of exhibitions that included, among many other collective shows, Greenhouse Display (Estufa Fria, 1996), Jetlag (at the rectory of the Universidade de Lisboa, 1996). Zapping Ecstasy (CAPC, 1996 ) , X-Rated (ZDB, 1997) , O Império Contra-Ataca (The Empire Strikes Back, ZDB, 1998) , (A)casos (&)materiais (CAPC, 1999 ) , PIano XXI (G-Mac, Glasgow, 2000 ) , Urban Lab - Bienal da Maia (2001), most o f them curated by Paulo Mendes or Pedro Cabral Santo. It would be through these exhibitions that a given number of artists would become known, bringing together new names such as Rui Toscano, Miguel Soares, Carlos Roque, Alexandre Estrela, and Rui Valério, to the already consolidated Ângela Ferreira, João Tabarra, Miguel Palma, João Louro, Entertainment Co., Paulo Mendes, João Paulo Feliciano, Fernando José Pereira, Pedro Cabral Santo, Augusto Alves da Silva, Rui Serra, Cristina Mateus and Miguel Leal. Paulo Mendes, L´Art de Vivre (Portrait) / Ken C´est Moi, Barbie C´est Moi, Action Man C´est Moi, 1997/98. Fotografia a cores, 12 partes, 39, 5 x 29, 5 cm. (cada), Ed. 6 exemplares. Col. Fundação Portugal Telecom; Col. Ivo Martins. Arquivo Paulo Mendes.   Pedro Cabral Santo, Exit (For You Guys), 1998-99. Vídeo, cor, som, 20´. Vista da projecção na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2002. Col. particular. DMF. João Tabarra, This is not a drill (no pain, no gain) (detalhe), 1999. Fotografia a cores, 180 x 275 cm. Col. Museu do Chiado - MNAC. Cortesia do artista. At the same time, yet another group of artists, mostly educated at Ar.Co, would become known such as Francisco Tropa, José Drummond, Edgar Massul, André Maranha, Rui Calçada Bastos and Noé Sendas, among others. In the beginning, we may say that there was a certain amount of rivalry between both groups, mainly due to each group's artistic schooling background. With the growing professionalization the competition would dissolve.     António Olaio, What happened to Henri Matisse, 1997. Óleo sobre tela, 90 x 250 cm. Col. Gerardo Burmester. António Olaio. Furthermore, the end result would be very different from the original grouping. One must bear in mind that the renewal of attitudes and processes are something done in tandem with the development of researches in the more classical, sounder disciplines. A special mention should be given to the deepening of the research on the contemporary possibilities of painting, in the diversity of its dimensions and its traditions, in many artists whose works had been developed with consistency. As examples, the unique tone evocative of the history of painting of Miguel Branco, the reinvention of landscape by João Queiroz, the exploring of abstract textures by João Jacinto, the surprising effect of Gil Heitor Cortesão's pe­culiar pictorial technique, the verve of the narrative pulsion-driven register of Fátima Mendonça, or the evolution of José Loureiro's work towards a systematic display through the practice of the never-ending potential of painting, beyond any formal codification.   Another major factor for the definition of the Portuguese art's panorama and its coefficient of professionalization was the creation of a Ministry of Culture in 1995 and its Institute for the Contemporary Art (lAC). Headed since its inception by Fernando Calhau, lAC would have a paramount central role in the growing verve of the production and divulgation circuits, which are non­existent in the Portuguese arts, and in 1997 it would resume the national participation in the Venice Biennial (with Julião Sarmento curated by Alexandre Melo).   Alexandre Estrela, Biovoid, 1998. Fibra de vidro e holograma, 500 x 250 cm. Apresentado na Sala do Veado. Col. do artista. Alexandre Estrela. Rui Toscano, Infinity, 2001. Retroprojecção vídeo, DVD, 35´´, loop, 350 x 150 cm. Cortesia do artista / Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art. Video Still - Cortesia do artista. Other events are also developed in order to achieve the same result: from the creation of the Berardo Collection to the related opening of the Museum of Modern Art in Sintra, and the decisive opening of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, with the international exhibition Circa 1968 curated by Vicente Todolí and João Fernandes.   Institutionally speaking, it is not an exaggeration to say that the second half of the 90s was definitely characterised by a huge progress. Besides the Serralves Foundation, we would witness the creation or the dynamizing of places such as Centro Cultural de Belém, Culturgest and Museu do Chiado without forgetting the role of the Luso-American Foundation.   A more conscious cultural policy of the cosmopolite contemporaneity allowed for the construction of a far sounder basis for circulation and curating (programming). In addition, and contrarily to popular belief, Portuguese artists were able to reach a reasonable institutional network of support, with a relative accessibility to scholarships, funding and subsidies. Conversely, the sheer lack of big collectors in the national territory was, and still is, a problem that cuts short the ambitions of the cultural agents, which are limited to a local horizon that, ultimately, is also a hindrance for the aspirations to become international of most Portuguese artists.   In this case, there is a severance between the State and civil society. Thus, Portugal still lacks the necessary means to affirm an image at an international level. Although it is true today those artists themselves are able to find their own accessibility channels and their own modes to become integrated in international circuits, it is also true that it is very difficult to keep up such a nature in the long run. Today, just as it happened before, contemporary art is an import product, and Portugal is not able to develop ambitious and consistent exportation strategies. Ficha Técnica | Credits

The 70s   Julião Sarmento, Faces (detalhe), 1976. Filme Super 8, cor, sem som, 44´22´´, dim. variáveis. Col. Van Abbemuseum.José Manuel Costa Alves.         Eduardo Luiz, O 7º disfarce de Zeus, 1972. Óleo sobre tela, 194 x 113 cm. Col. Centro de Arte / Col. Manuel de Brito.DR/ Cortesia Galeria III.   On the eve of the 1974 Democratic Revolution, Portugal was presented with a very complicated state of affairs. To begin with there was a colonial war that was sus­tained for too long and with no visible solution. The belated and ineffective openness of the political sys­tem, a feeble attempt by the administration of Marcelo Caetano since 1968, and the deterioration of the institu­tional structures of the Estado Novo (lit. "New State") whose political core was powerless to bring a way out of the stalemate in which Portugal found itself, generated a government deep in the agony for survival and ex­tremely weakened under the eyes of the international community. Secondly, a generalized dissatisfaction and the social and economic difficulties of the population characterized the isolated reality of a country that still mirrored itself in the famous Salazar adage, "Proudly Standing Alone", guided by a class dependent upon ob­solete political and ideological values.   Within this framework, battered by the regime's long life, Portuguese society suffered the negative ef­fects of political interference in the dynamics of cul­ture. The relative openness of the system in the regime's last years only underlined and made more visible the perception of the abyss that separated the social and artistic reality of Portugal and the contemporary inter­national dynamics.   Notwithstanding, one must not believe that noth­ing existed before the 25th April 1974 Revolution (a democratic military coup d' etat) and neither that every­thing became possible and successfully so. Actually the lack for adequate cultural policies was unvarying and persistent.   Within the artistic context, more specifically the vi­sual arts sphere, the ideological, political transition period that the country went through in the 70s produced a complex multiplicity of references, which indirectly contributed towards the opening of a new juncture of the cultural and artistic activities.   If one cannot deny that Marcelo Caetano administration's reforms allowed for a more effectual openness to the international scene, one cannot forget that the basic cultural policy was characterized by an institutional inefficiency. This was verified by the lack of museums or centres for contemporary art, by the fragility or total inexistence of a specific market and by the almost complete absence of State endowments to contemporary aesthetical actions. Nevertheless, with the new economic measures of Marcelo Caetano's government, besides the many commissions for the headquarters of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the creation of the Soquil Awards (1968-1972), one can say that the art market began to give signs of some vitality. As for instance with the emergence of a clientele that became more aware and attentive towards modern art, in detriment of a deep-seated, 19th century-informed judgement. The period of high speculation on the value of works of art around 1973 was not enough to say that there was any sort of effective, consistent market dynamics.   Such a diminutive boom of the art commerce in Lisbon and Porto was translated into the proliferation of many galleries or other exhibition spaces. By the end of the 60s and throughout the next decade, the galleries Zen (1970) and Módulo-Centro Difusor de Arte (1975) opened in Porto, Buchholz (from 1965 at Duque de Palmela street), Dinastia (1968), Judite da Cruz, S. Mamede (1969), Quadrum (1973) and the second Módulo Gallery (1979) in Lisbon, and Ogiva in Óbidos (1970). In addition to the exposure and formation of several artists by these galleries, especially by the Quadrum and the Ogiva Galleries which promoted a movement of decentralization, the CAPC (Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra - Circle for Visual Arts in Coimbra) assumed an important role in the experimentation and promotion of new aesthetical attitudes with events as critical as Minha Nossa Coimbra Deles (Theirs Mine Ours Coimbra, 1973), Arte na Rua or 1000001º Aniversário da Arte (Art on the Streets and 1000001st Anniversary of Art, both in 1974) . These symbolic "happenings" and "performance" acts aimed to call people's attention towards the fact that the institutions lacked thoughtfulness, as well as to generate the required conscience for the work to be done ahead.     Sá Nogueira, Erotropo, 1970. Técnica mista sobre tela foto-sensível, 77 x 121 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP.DR/ Cortesia Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP.   Pires Vieira, Des-Construções, 1974. Tela de algodão, esmalte sintético, corda, dim. variáveis. Col. Fundação de Serralves.Catarina Costa Cabral.     Nikias Skapinakis, Encontro de Natália Correia, Fernanda Botelho e Maria João Pires, 1974. Óleo sobre tela, 140 x 110 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP.DR/ Cortesia Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.         João Cutileiro, Maquete de D. Sebastião - I, 1972. Mármore, 46 x 15 x 15 cm. Col. particular.João Cutileiro Jr.     The restructuring of the Portuguese chapter of the Art Critics Association (AICA) in 1969 was of vital consequence but far more important was the emergence of the critical, modernized discourse of Ernesto de Sousa. A critic, curator and artist, Ernesto de Sousa was a controversial figure then, who developed a strategy of ruptures and discontinuities in relation to the established canons. After a phase dedicated to cinema and neorealist aesthetics, Sousa chose the path of experimental art of a strong conceptual vein, in close harmony with what was being done abroad. He visited the 1972 Kassel Documenta, where he would meet Joseph Beuys and came across directly with Harald Szeemann's ideas. This would then deeply mark his critical thought and contribute to bring new issues to the national stage such as the dematerialization of art, the notion of "open-ended work", of the artist as an "aesthetic operator" and of the active role of the spectator. As a curator and promoter of projects, we should highlight his Encontros do Guincho (Meeting at Guincho, 1969), Nós não estamos algures (We are not Somewhere, 1969), O meu corpo é o teu corpo (My Body Is your Body, 1971) and the exhibitions held within the framework of the AICA, such as Do Vazio à Pró-Vocação (From Emptiness to Pro-Vocation, 1972) and Projectos-Ideias (Projects-Ideas, 1974). We should also mention the decade's historical milestone: Alternativa Zero (Alternative Zero, 1977).   The deaths of Eduardo Viana (1967) and Almada Negreiros (1970) and the first major retrospective of Vieira da Silva in Portugal held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1970) are the take-off, as it were, for a new period of the scene of Portuguese art.   In the first half of the 70s there were some new magazines appearing: Colóquio- Artes (1971-1997), whose director was José-Augusto França; in Porto, in 1973, the Revista de Artes Plásticas was put out. The following year, José-Augusto França sees his A Arte em Portugal no Século XX (Portuguese Art in the 20th Century) published, a reference work for the national artistic historiography. Also in 1973 - the year Picasso dies - there were three other major events that we must mention.   During April an exhibition called 26 Artistas de Hoje (26 Contemporary Artists) gathered at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (SNBA) some of the works by the art­ists who had been the recipients of the Soquil Award.   In September of the same year, in Lagos, Algarve, the Cutileiro's monument to Dom Sebastião was inaugurated. It is not easy to find another figure who, through its sheer historical, cultural and mythical clout, expresses more perfectly the atmosphere of nostalgia and of awe for the past that hindered the whole Portuguese society for so many decades. At the same time Dom Sebastião was also one of the most inspiring figures for the irrational, reactionary, inactive and melancholic attitude that for such a long time characterized the most influent currents of though in Portugal. These few historical and cultural considerations will cast some light upon the importance one must give to João Cutileiro's statue of Dom Sebastião and why we consider it to be one of the key-works of the period. From his technical experi­ence with "articulated dolls", the sculptor produces us the young king depicted as a small boy who questions the Imperial Portugal myth, renovating and raising at the same time the boundaries of Portuguese statuary, dethroning forever the regime's sculptoric tenets, whose head-figure was Francisco Franco. The physical presence of this statue at a plaza in Lagos is associated to the gesture with which the adolescent Sebastião places his helmet on the ground and offers his clear, open gaze to his surroundings and through which his body becomes absorbed by the light.       José de Guimarães, Máscara com Tatuagens, 1973. Acrílico sobre tela, 100 x 81 cm. Col. Museum Würth.José Manuel Costa Alves.   Eduardo Batarda, What´s in a nose?, 1973. Aguarela sobre tela, 77,3 x 58,8 cm. Col. Banco Privado Português.DR/ Cortesia Banco Privado Português.   João Abel Manta, MFA - Sentinela do Povo. Postal, sem data. Col. Museu da Cidade - CML.DR/ Cortesia Arquivo Fotográfico do Museu da Cidade.   There were other artistic events that announced the imminence of political changes in a more evident way. In December 1973, at the SNBA, the Exposição 73 is opened. Right in the hall one found a realistic sculpture of a dead soldier, with the uniform used in the colonial wars its title is Jaz Morto e Arrefece (Laying Dead and Getting Cold), and Clara Menéres is the author. Behind this sculpture, a frieze of silent, stone-dead faces in a paint­ing by Rui Filipe. During the night of the opening, a performance by Joao Vieira, which showed a naked woman painted in gold, became a small scandal. The 25th of April of 1974 witnesses the "25th of April"..   In the following June 10th, Portugal's National Day, forty eight artists gather to commemorate the date and paint a huge panel, simultaneously and in front of a great audience and television cameras, The theme is freedom. This was a somewhat naïve event, a little comical even, but we cannot deny its emotional and contextual authenticity. During the film shoot, someone approached Júlio Pomar and tells him that his painting is complicated. He replies by saying that life is complicated too.   Fernando Calhau, S/ título, # 99. Materialização de um quadrado imaginário, 1974. Fotografia a cor e tinta da china sobre papel fotográfico, (4 x) 8,5 x 12 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves.DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves.   In Porto, a "commission for a dynamic culture", which gathers visual artists, writers and poets, organized on the same day the Funeral for the National Museum Soares dos Reis. This protest - that assembled around 500 people - was aimed at the Portuguese Museum system in general, which was utterly obsolete.   The political events of 1974 interrupted the rhythm of the visual arts exhibitions, as well as the related critical work. There are almost no references whatsoever to artistic practices in the newspapers, although the inevitable enthusiasm triggered by the political uproar determined, even if fleetly, a certain renewal of cultural participation, in which a new relationship between artists and the general public was at least hinted at.         Clara Menéres, Mulher-terra-vida, 1977. Acrílico, terra e relva, 80 x 270 x 160 cm. Vista da instalação na exposição Alternativa Zero, Galeria de Belém..Clara Menéres.   As it is usual in periods of political turmoil, whether pre- or post-revolutionary, many artists and cultural practices were instrumentalised by the basest, most anachronic and absurd of ideological manipulations. If we have to salvage something through aesthetic criteria from the whole political disturbances we should mention João Abel Manta´s cartoons and the magnificent street murals created by the MRPP party members, most of them having been destroyed in the meantime.   As for the aesthetic choices of these years there were continuous and simultaneous discussions of the dialectics between figurativism and abstraction, between painting and conceptual art (or post-conceptual actions) and there was a rethinking of the artists' intentions, now free from portuguese surrealism and neorealism and from censorship. It was in the new proposals being pursued abroad from the various strands of conceptualism to the post-avantgarde trends that artists sought a direction for a renewal or for more evi­dent references for contemporaneity. Between the gridded rules of conceptualism and neo-figurativism, the aesthetic proposals of the 70s were rebalanced especially towards a growing consolidation of the individual paths of each and every artist.   Amongst these many questionings and revisions of modernity there were some important exhibitions from retrospectives to thematic shows, naturally related to the political and social situation of the country (for instance, the exhibition Pena de Morte, Tortura, Prisão Política - Death Penalty, Torture, Political Prison - held at the SNBA in 1975). Many pluralistic practices and intentions were publicized, which revealed not only a multiplicity of what was available, as well as the harmonious conviviality between different generations of artists, different styles, dynamics and references.     Vitor Pomar, S/ título, 1979. Acrílico sobre tela, 340 x 200 cm. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. .Laura Castro e Caldas e Paulo Cintra.         Ana Hatherly, As Ruas de Lisboa, 1977. Colagem, 110 x 90 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP.Mário de Oliveira.     Within the visual arts, a major exhibition meant an ending to the period of the post-revolutionary turmoil, which served as a reflection upon the whole previous decade where the most avant-garde artistic experiences were concerned. We are referring to Alternativa Zero, at the Modern Art National Gallery, in Belém, 1977.This exhibition was organised by Ernesto de Sousa and it functioned as an assessment of the works that, within Portugal, had revealed a wider, closer harmony with the evolution trends, internationally speaking, of contemporary art. According to the words of the descriptive catalogue, the spectator was alerted to the fact that this event "wishes to be 'much more' that an exhibition: or to put things in another perspective, it wishes to become an open-ended exhibition with all the possible consequences within 'this' society, including the drive (even if only to a small extent) to transform it". The conceptual proposals by artists such as Alberto Carneiro, Clara Menéres with Mulher-Terra-Vida (Woman-Earth-Life) and João Vieira's video, were the example and proof of the exhibition's pluralistic line of thought, in a time when the absence of an art market deprived Portuguese works of a more effective or even real visibility. The exhibition titled Alternativa Zero - Tendências Polémicas na Arte Portuguesa Contemporânea (Alternative Zero - Polemic Tendencies in Contemporary Portuguese Art) was thus the first presentation of works of art that in Portugal had as models corresponding conceptual attitudes. However a minor and marginalized situation, it would be from this event that a first wave of artists would assume a preponderant role throughout the 80s.   In 1978, we have the first edition of the Art International Biennial of Vila Nova de Cerveira. This was an initiative that privileged contemporaneity in the first editions, which promoted artistic decentralization, which revealed curious cultural asymmetries and that made possible the temporary coexistence of the locality's own regional expressive traditions and the newness of the exhibited artistic forms.   Perhaps it was under the influence of this first Biennial of Vila Nova de Cerveira that the Secretary of State for Culture organised in 1979 the first edition of the Drawing International Biennial. In 1981 this event would be cut short abruptly, due to a fire in the Belém Gallery. Although it was not continued, one must un­derline its importance for the fact its gallery presented some of the works that crossed the boundary of drawing and reached an original experimentalist freedom using paper and its potentialities as their support.   The 70s was also the stage for the upholding of many visual languages that had been developed by artists in the previous decades but in many respects it radicalized some of the options developed in the 60s and it presented and consecrated a number of authors that demonstrated to possess very mature visual options. Among these artists, some of which consolidated their presence in both their critical reception and the art market of the time, we should refer the names of Júlio Pomar, Paula Rego, Joaquim Rodrigo, Mário Cesariny, António Sena, Álvaro Lapa, José de Guimarães and Eduardo Batarda.   Through the continuation of the researches of the previous years, namely in the field of concrete poetry, the highlight belongs to the eclectic work of Ana Hatherly, who made drawings, paintings, performances, happenings (such as Rotura - Routure in 1977) and cinema (Revolução - Revolution - in 1975). As an example, her participation at the Alternative Zero with Poemad'entro.   Within the field of painting, Luísa Correia Pereira, through her watercolours, collages on paper and other supports and techniques, elaborated an oeuvre whose main traits are a spontaneous representation and the bright chromatics with references to places, characters and objects from the imaginary worlds and more recently with references to the artist's own childhood. Vítor Pomar, who is strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism, used a two-colour aesthetic in his painting, mainly black and white, inscribing his work in the domain of abstractionism, but he also worked on photo­graphy, video and experimental cinema.   Helena Almeida, # 1 Desenho Habitado, 1977. 6 fotografias a preto e branco, tinta e colagem de crina, 42 x 52,2 cm (cada). Col. Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento em depósito na Fundação de Serralves.Laura Castro Caldas e Paulo Cintra.   There were other artists who pursued paths at the margin of more traditionalised disciplines, such as Alberto Carneiro. He began during these years his first "theatre-ambiences" with works as significant as O Canavial: memória-metamorfose de um corpo ausente (The Marsh: metamorphosis-memory of an absent body, 1968-1970), Uma Floresta para os Teus Sonhos (A Forest for your dreams, 1970) and Uma linha para os teus sentimentos estéticos (A line for your aesthetical feelings, 1970-71), not to mention other proposals, closer to land art, such as Operação Estética em Vilar do Paraíso (Aesthetical Action in Vilar do Paraíso, 1973). Helena Almeida shifts her work towards using different media, especially photography, in which self-representation and the notions of space and of the performative body become key-references.   António Palolo extends his work to film, video and installation, approaching neo-conceptualist tendencies, and leaving behind him his painting influenced by the pop art and the minimalism attitudes of the early 70s. Julião Sarmento turns to photography and film directing as well, although keeping up with his exploration of sexual themes, characteristic of his pre­vious pictorial works.     Vista da exposição Alternativa Zero, 1977. Col. Fundação de Serralves.DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves.   Ana Vieira, Ambiente - Sala de Jantar, 1971. Técnica mista, alt. 2m x 3,12m x 3,12m. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP.Carlos Azevedo.   Also inscribed in a conceptual language we come across the name of Graça Pereira Coutinho, who lived in London and who used natural materials (such as dirt, straw, sand, leaves, chalk), artisan-like methods, handprints, illegible words, doodles, and many memories from her personal experiences, in order to create solutions that hover between sculpture and painting. On a different conceptual path, specifically exploring the concept of the work of art and its reception and divulgation mechanisms, we find Manuel Casimiro, who lived in France at the time. His was a work that was opened towards the image archive of the history of art having as its protagonist an egg-shaped form whose importance would grow from the 70s onwards.   José Barrias, who lived in Milan since the 60s, being quite conscious that the 70s was a period in which techniques could be converged and blended, began to develop several thematic cycles in the field of visual arts in conjunction with his more theoretical work. Ana Vieira was another artist who researched the interchange of genres, especially through her installation-ambiences done throughout the 70s, in which the spectator assumed a central role, whether for the fact he or she was invited to participate or because he or she was barred from entering the spaces created by the artist.   Pedro Calapez, S/ título (detalhe), 1982. Grafite sobre papel, 280 x 150 cm. Col. Maria de Belém Sampaio.José Manuel Costa Alves.   Related with post-minimalism, we have the works of Fernando Calhau and Zulmiro de Carvalho. The latter explored in his sculptures the very plasticity of materials such as wood, iron and stone. Fernando Calhau adopted certain op(tical) values and developed many works closer to conceptualism via photography and film.   Pires Vieira is another artist who demonstrated a certain minimalism propensity in his paintings of the 70s, exploring in the first years of that decade on pure colours and later on turning to issues related to the “de­construction" of painting, its decomposition in structures and the very processes of elaboration. All these actions resulted in canvases that were hung with no framework and with cut-out, patterned geometrical forms.   Where collective action is concerned, the 70s were characterised by a festive and utopia-tinted feeling characteristic of its socio-political context. It witnessed a number of projects, some of which were already re­ferred to, as well as the founding of new artists' groups that shared a certain set of artistic and social goals, namely the convergence of several disciplines (with reminiscences of the Fluxus movement), the refusal of any sort of academicism and social and political intervention. In this context we can mention the Acre group, formed in 1974 by Clara Menéres, Lima de Carvalho and Alfredo Queiroz Ribeiro, who acted out events such as painting the pavement of Rua Augusta in the centre of Lisbon and/or the distribution of artists' diplomas - as Piero Manzoni did - at the Opinião Gallery. More directly associated to painting and performance, the Puzzle group, which worked between 1975 and 1980, developed many issues related to the social function of art and the artist. Ficha Técnica | Credits

The 80s     Pedro Casqueiro, S/título (detalhe), 1984. Acrílico sobre tela, 150x150 cm. Col. particular. Abílio Leitão.         Pedro Proença, Prometeu, 1983. Acrílico sobre papel, 174 x 130 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves. DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves. The establishment of a democratic regime in Portugal made possible by the 25th of April 1974 brought about new cultural conditions, which on its turn allowed for the appearance and the swift recognition of a new wave of creators and cultural agents in the 80s. In the field of visual arts this decade was characterized by the emergence of a large and diversified group of artists with a strong, affirmative attitude in relation to their own works combined with a particularly dynamic cultural presence. At the same time a new wave of agents associated to the area from gallery owners to art critics (as Alexandre Melo and João Pinharanda, for instance) also emerged. These are people who have extraordinarily contributed towards the capacity of circulation and vitality of the scene, reflecting the international ten­dencies of the time where the growth of the popularity of visual arts was concerned. As it should be evident the vitality of the artistic scene, which we have referred to and consider being quite characteristic of the period, was not exclusive to the emerging artists of the time. Quite the contrary, this was a state of affairs in which artists representative of very different generations and sensibilities were juxtaposed in the same setting and contributed to a body of work leading to a distinctively dynamic and di­verse artistic scene. The 80s are a witness to the cross-pollination of some of the artistic practices inherited from the previous decade such as Post-Conceptualism with Helena Almeida, Alberto Carneiro and Fernando Calhau, for instances, or the new realities of the 80s, which showed a high plurality of people and resulted in a hybridization of aesthetic solutions. However, a special place should be reserved to artists whose work and public recognition were already consolidated before the 80s but that would reach in this decade an outstanding notoriety and a renewed vigour. A few examples are António Palolo, António Dacosta (who resumed his pictorial activities), Paula Rego, Menez (who turns to a more figurative vein), Pomar (who evokes the great literary figures of the country), Eduardo Batarda and Álvaro Lapa. Nikias Skapinakis returns to landscape in this decade (Vale dos Reis - Valley of the Kings) and would continue that research until the next decade, abandoning the figurativism he pursued in the 60s and 70s under the strong influence of poster art. Joaquim Bravo's work is recognized by this time: he developed a systematic research on formal inventiveness, which reached an extremely free, flexible and original non-geometrical abstraction. Also, due to his personal enthusiasm and pedagogical skills, from the late 70s onwards he constructed a circle of friends that included a number of younger artists such as Xana, José Miranda Justo, Pedro Cabrita Reis and João Paulo Feliciano. The exhibition Depois do Modernismo (After Modernism, SNBA, 1983) organised by Luís Serpa brought to Portugal for the first time the issue of and the consequent debate on post-modernity, corresponding thus to the contemporary visual arts situation of a "return to painting", and the emergence of the transavantgardes, neo-expressionism, "bad painting" and new figurativisms. These movements were predominated by human figurativism and more often than not underlined by an impulse-driven spontaneity in its execution. This exhibition - most artists of which had been active in the previous decade, with the exception of Gaëtan and Pedro Calapez - was presented with parallel actions in the fields of contemporary dance, music, fashion and architecture. In the following year two other exhibitions would also contribute to the strengthening of such aesthetic diversity and the endorsement of theoretical debates: Os Novos Primitivos (The New Primitives) curated by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida in Porto and Atitutes Litorais (Coastal Attitudes) curated by José Miranda Justo in Lisbon.     Albuquerque Mendes, Nota de mil escudos, 1981/82. Óleo sobre papel colado em platex, 48 x 95 cm. Col. Banco Comercial Português. DR/ Cortesia Galeria Graça Brandão.   Julião Sarmento, Noites Brancas, 1982. Técnica mista sobre papel, 162 x 133 cm. Col. Isabel e Julião Sarmento. José Manuel Costa Alves.   André Gomes, Cozinha dos Anjos, 1991. Polaroid / Fujichrome, 100 x 80 cm (cada) e 210 x 320 cm (dim. totais). Cortesia do Artista. Cortesia do artista. In this context, Julião Sarmento, who had made a name for himself as an author of post-conceptual practices, became the most internationally known name of Portuguese art due to his participation at the 1982 and the 1987 Kassel Documentas. One may include in this dynamic period the works of very different types of artists. Gerardo Burmester unfolds his attitude and experience as an artist living with an unrelenting nostalgia for Romanticism's ideals of beauty and emotion. One must bear in mind his exuberant landscapes - the voluptuous usage of wood, leather and felt - in all the objects he produced by the late years of the decade. And in addition, the exquisite use of the varied colours and the overwhelming debauchery of reds and golds as well as the elegance of his drawing and the accuracy of the forms in his early 90s installations.     António Palolo, S/título, 1983. Acrílico sobre tela, 179 x 132 cm. Col. particular. José Manuel Costa Alves. Pedro Casqueiro, Sem Título, 1986. Acrílico sobre tela, 177 x 168 cm. Cortesia Galeria Filomena Soares. DR/ Cortesia Galeria Filomena Soares. Ilda David, S/título, 1989. Óleo sobre tela, 120 x 120 cm. Col. particular. Laura Castro Caldas e Paulo Cintra. Albuquerque Mendes finds in self-representation, mythical and religious figurations and evocations some of the strongest guiding principles of a work in which the practice of painting is combined with experiences in the areas of installation and performance.   António Dacosta, O Bailador, 1986. Acrílico sobre tela, 194,5 x 129,5 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves. DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves.         Graça Pereira Coutinho, Letters to my mother, 1986. Técnica mista sobre tela, 210 x 166 cm. Col. Particular. DR/ Cortesia Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art.   Graça Morais continues her successful career based on a figurativism with strong expressive intent, associating it to archetypes repossessed from a traditional rurality. António Cerveira Pinto and Leonel Moura, who have always attempted to react through their careers and works to the successive turnabouts and changes of the aesthetic and ideological situations, were also important contributors for the debates on post-modernity and beyond. Moura's visual work was internationally recognised by the late 80s with the works in which he used photographic images of referential figures and icons from Portuguese, European and North-American cultural traditions. In this decade, photography would increasingly become more integrated in the circle of the Fine Arts, particularly due to Jorge Molder's work. André Gomes is a peculiar case, in the sense that his different us ages of photography lead to a very personal albeit transdisciplinary universe. His work incorporated the technological, economical and media related determinations of the processes through which the imaginary is built through the use of instantaneous photography, polaroid, video, and the multiplicity of combinations of different types of photographs. Paulo Nozolino was also another name that reached a wide public recognition although his work is circumscribed to a more traditional and specific strand of photography, especially where its documental facet is concerned. Among many younger artists, photography was the privileged medium: such as Daniel Blaufuks who uses it in a more intimate perspective and Augusto Alves da Silva who employs it with a sociological mind. The Encontros de Fotografia de Coimbra (Encounters of Photography in Coimbra), organized by Albano da Silva Pereira since 1980, which would lead to the present CAV (Centre for the Visual Arts), made a major contribution for the reinforcement of the national photography scene and at the same time it held many exhibitions of several international photographers. One of the most outstanding characteristics of the art scene of the 80s was the vivid and media-savvy liveliness brought by the public presence of successive waves of new artists who made up several informal groups revealed in the decade through their exhibitions and through collective interviews. One must take in account however that what brought these artists together was more of a sharing common complicities and attitudes - for having studied together, for a desire to be promoted together - than for any aesthetic or programmatic affinities, as one would immediately realize as soon as each of these artists, individually, engaged in the pursuit of their own careers. One of the groups that were active at the outset of the decade included, among many others, Pedro Calapez, José Pedro Croft, Pedro Cabrita Reis and Rui Sanches. They participated in many exhibitions but perhaps one of the most important ones was Arquipélago (Archipelago, SNBA, 1985) in which Ana León and Rosa Carvalho also participated. From this group, Pedro Cabrita Reis was an artist able to built one of the most consistent inter­national careers of the country, making him one of the most known names of his generation. Within the same chronological context, it is essential to refer to the work of other artists, such as Pedro Casqueiro, Ana Vidigal, Ilda David, Manuel Rosa and Pedro Tudela. Ana Vidigal brings painting and writing together, incorporating diverse materials in order to produce a universe of personal references filled with colour and rhythm. Ilda David's paintings have a strong lyrical vocation inspired chiefly by a literary imaginary.     José Pedro Croft, S/título, 1982. Escultura em mármore, 100 x 160 x 5 cm (base). Col. particular. DR/ Cortesia do artista. Graça Morais, Cabo Verde, 1988. Acrílico e pastel sobre lona, 200 x 185 cm. Col. Centro de Arte / Col. Manuel de Brito. Carlos Pombo. Álvaro Lapa, Os criminosos e as suas propriedades, 1974/75. Acrílico, tinta de escrever e cartolina platex, 63,5 x 121 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Mário de Oliveira. The sculpture of Manuel Rosa is integrated in an area where memory, wandering, survival and premonition are present. Ever since his first individual exhibition in 1984 he has kept the exact same logic of processes of work, although coming closer and closer to a more abstract and reflective stance. His allusions to igloos, tunnels and houses are mainly evocative of symbolic places of imprisonment and escape, of formation and conservation. However, in his works of the 90s, the major themes were replaced by a more emotional, artisan-like approach, giving it an intimate, workshop-like dimension.   Júlio Pomar, Lusitânia no Bairro Latino - Retratos de Mário Sá Carneiro, Santa-Rita Pintor e Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, 1985. Acrílico sobre tela, 158,5 x 154 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian /CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira. Leonel Moura, s/título (Portugal Dupla), 1987. Acrílico sobre fotografía e ferro, 110 x 155,5 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves. DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves.   Fernando Calhau, s/título, 1988. Acrílico sobre tela e ferro, 86 x 169,5 x 11 cm. Col. Margarida Veiga. José Manuel Costa Alves. Eduardo Batarda, El Scotcho, 1987. Acrílico sobre tela, 150 x 200 cm. Col. Comendador Arlindo Costa Leite. José Manuel Costa Alves. As for Pedro Tudela, the very materiality of the body - with all its visceral and organic folds - was chosen as the polarizing axis of a work that brings together a material, sensual painting and a more sophisticated choice for multimedia installations. Making a name for himself in the same circle, a younger artist, Rui Chafes, became early on a main character of the field of sculpture, which still holds true today. Furthermore, we should emphasize his effective international recognition. Fernanda Fragateiro started with drawings but soon moved to the creation of installations with strong impact - works that assemble registers of intimacy and an intricate work of space articulation. This very topic of space should also bring about the mention of Patrícia Garrido, who presents us with domestic spaces made significant through the body, and of Carlos Nogueira, who was driven by an aspiration to articulate the intimate space with both natural and man-constructed spaces.   Rui Sanches, Mme. Récamier, segundo David, 1989. Madeira, pano e bronze, 164 x 180 x 167 cm. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. Laura Castro Caldas e Paulo Cintra. Pedro Cabrita Reis, s/título, 1987. Técnica mista sobre madeira, 240 x 240 cm. (4 elementos de 120 x 120 cm cada). Col. Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento. Laura Castro Caldas e Paulo Cintra.   Joaquim Bravo, Arrepio ou a Escolha do Crítico, 1989. Acrílico sobre tela, 90 x 105 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira. Manuel Rosa, S/título, 1989. Calcário e anilina preta, 93 x 160 x 75 cm. Col. particular. DR/ Cortesia Assírio & Alvim. Still another wave of artists that needs mentioning appeared in the mid 80s made known through several collective exhibitions among which Continentes (Continents, SNBA, 1986), which brought together Pedro Portugal, Pedro Proença, Fernando Brito, lvo, Xana and Manuel João Vieira. This group's initial practice chose an immense visual exuberance, reflected in their stances through a somewhat blasé eclecticism where references were concerned, a strong, provocative and playful manner and a very evident intention to create ironic commentaries on the contemporary artistic scene. The work of Xana, a mixture of painting, object-making and installation, clearly revealed dexterity with colours and forms. Manuel João Vieira would become famous later on as a lead singer of several bands such as Ena Pá 2000 and a sort of cultural/political agitator branded by a personal touch of critical humour. Where galleries and institutions are concerned, to put it briefly, we would like to highlight three traits of the Portuguese artistic scene of that time, which can be seen, perhaps among others, as causes of its structural debility. Firstly, we have the typical feebleness of the Portuguese cultural institutions, whether public or private. These are rarely able to survive the personal efforts, ideological enthusiasms, particular social dynamics or specific economical situations usually associated to the appearance of those very same institutions. After the customary vitality of their beginning they fail to secure an organized cultural base and a solid professional financial foundation. Therefore, some of them ended up disappearing or entering a phase of decline precisely in the moment when they should have entered a phase of maturity. The inconsistency of purposes by the State's and the public institutions' cultural initiatives and policies are also particularly evident and regrettable. Historically speaking these agents have been always characterized by the inability to draw goals and to adopt strategies and methods of organization and management that could promote a cohesive, consistent and effective cultural intervention of any kind, whether within the country or abroad.     Rui Chafes, Um sono profundo, 1988. 15 esculturas em ferro. Vista da exposição na Galeria LEO. DR/ Cortesia do artista.         Gerardo Burmester, Arquipélagos Vermelhos, 1992. Vista parcial da Instalação. DR/ Cortesia Galeria Pedro Oliveira. A second trait that is quite debilitating to the national artistic situation, and that stems from the obstructions, as it were, imposed by the State we just mentioned, is the historical inability of the Portuguese powers to assure the foundation of a public collection or a museum that could gather the most representative examples of Portuguese art of the 20th century. Simply put, the Portuguese State has no collection and no place to exhibit what is most significant in modern and contemporary Portuguese art. The crucial and elementary cultural function, a public function, of preserving history and didactically display a group of representative works of the contem­porary artistic heritage has not yet been addressed. All the acquisitions of works, when actually done, were irregular, discontinuous and disarticulated. What the Portuguese State possesses and can exhibit publicly to the new generations as the examples of the 20th century Portuguese artistic creation is insufficient, and notoriously so. Nonetheless, as if replacing the State in this unaccomplished duty we should mention the existence of the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and of a few other private collections. These two traits trigger still yet another one, which is extremely serious and dangerous for the development of the dynamics of culture and the creative processes in Portugal: the sheer absence or extreme insufficiency of cultural transmission mechanisms through which the cultural practices and experiences that have been accumulated over time, and the very historical information and transmission, can be assured. Due to the absence or debility of these mechanisms - adequately revealed by the mentioned fact of the State's lack of response and responsibility and the persistent anachronism of the functioning models of the official artistic forma­tion institutions -, the older generations of artists feel ignored, forgotten, abandoned and even despised, and the younger ones feel that they are building everything from scratch as if nothing ever existed before. The utter waste of knowledge, time and energy that this gap conveys is absolutely huge. Instead of a convergence of the generations, everyone spends precious time in repeating what was once said and done many times before, when they should be employing these ideas immediately for their development and unfolding them towards their ultimate consequences. Before the 25th of April we had above all the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and, on a smaller scale, the SNBA as the main centres of vitality in the Portuguese art scene. Later on the SNBA would lose this leading role and its contact with contemporaneity although it did present now and then important exhibitions. Gulbenkian, however, especially after the opening of its Modern Art Centre in 1983, but after a phase of a hesitant contact with the new situation of the 80s - of which we would like to mention the exhibitions Van Abbe and Diálogo (Dialog) as the exceptions - would become in the next decade informed by perspectives closer to the dynamics of its time-frame. As for the art galleries, after all the cultural and artistic vivacity of the 60s and the brief period of euphoria in the art market in the early 70s, the sole surviving gallery opened throughout this time was III Gallery. The reason for this lies in the almost museum-like nature of the gallery's collection and the personal collection of Manuel de Brito. From the galleries that opened their activities in the 70s, and after a first phase branded by the social and political turmoil and by the absence of an art market, the continuity and the survival of the Módulo Gallery - and until very recently of the Quadrum Gallery - is but the proof of the too much weight that passionate and cultural aspects have taken in the motivations of their agents, as well as it makes up the logic foundation of their cultural prestige and their connotation as "avantgardes" that was recognised at the time. By the mid 80s, we witnessed a moment of a higher dynamics due to the opening of several new galleries among which we will name two for very different rea­sons and that became the best image of the decade: the Cómicos Gallery in Lisbon, and the Nasoni Gallery in Porto. Other relevant examples are Valentim de Carvalho in Lisbon and the Roma e Pavia Gallery in Porto, renamed later on as Pedro Oliveira.   Rui Chafes, Ooglid, 1995. 6 esculturas em ferro. Vista da exposição na Galerie Declercq. DR/ Cortesia do Artista.   Cómicos is a sort of cultural symbol of the decade. Its activity was intimately associated to a large number of names that comprised a group of artists with a stronger ability to consolidate their work in these last few years and to the aesthetic themes and debates that characterised those times, namely the issue of post-modernity. Nasoni is also a symbol but in a more economic point of view, given the fact it developed some of the most ambitious work ever made in the Portuguese art market. To be more precise Nasoni assumed and pushed forward that which we can call the Portuguese version, on a smaller scale, of the euphoria - notwithstanding its typical spiral of inflation and speculation - of the international contemporary art market of the time. The concentration of the number of openings, growths, and "déménagement" of spaces in the second half of the 80s, added to the project of the National Modern Art Museum in 1989, founded within the Casa de Serralves, are very clear indicators of the growth of the national cultural and economic vitality where visual arts are concerned, and an obvious consequence of an undeniable, even if very modest life of the Portuguese art market. As signs of a growing internationalization we should highlight the presence in Portugal of some solo exhibitions by foreigner key-figures of contemporary art and the regular presence of Portuguese galleries in international art fairs. A special mention should be given to the ARCO fair in Madrid: Portugal has participated in it since 1984 to our present times (and in 1998 Portugal was the guest country) which contrasts against the fact that between 1986 and 1994 Portugal did not participate in any way in the Venice Biennial. Ficha Técnica | Credits

The 60s     Lourdes Castro, Sombras projectadas (de Lourdes Castro e René Bertholo), Rue de Saints Pères, Paris, 1964. DR/ Cortesia Assírio & Alvim.   Salazar's dictatorship, whether one considers it as fascist or not, was perhaps not as ferocious and less spectacular than its European counterparts. However, it was definitely the longest (1926-1974) and as mutilating on all areas of Portugal's economical, social and cultural development. Except for a few moments limited in time this was a period in which the official altitude was that of seclusion in relation to the international trends that constructed the history of modernity.   There were effective changes and revitalization within the artistic circles in a strict sense, thanks to the exceptional cases of artists who emigrated abroad and to the few moments when Portugal allowed openings, however small they were. Although not much changed within the more generalized context. Portugal had a poorly educated population, a massively disinformed public opinion, a conservative official culture and the opposition was becoming increasingly a cultural anachronism.   Throughout the first half of the 20th century, where the visual arts are concerned, one witnessed the dragging of a burgeoning Modernism constantly struggling against a deep-rooted Naturalism and lyrical Romanticism. A unique light would then only shine during the second decade of the century with the work of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, alongside with that of Almada Negreiros. This happened within the framework of events related to the so-called "Orpheu" generation, also spurred by the presence of the Delaunays in Portugal after World War I.       Noronha da Costa, S/ título, 1968. Madeira, óleo espalhado e acrílico, 30,2 x 35,4 x 18 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves, Porto. José Manuel Costa Alves.         Fernando Lanhas, 042-69, 1969. Óleo sobre madeira, 98 x 148 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira.         Menez, Henrique VIII, 1966. Óleo sobre tela, 180 x 210 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira.         Paula Rego, Salazar a Vomitar a Pátria, 1960. Óleo sobre tela, 94 x 120 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira. When Portuguese society reached the 60s, it was kept away from the international circuits of artistic production and circulation, and deprived from access to exhibitions or other initiatives. Thus, the public opinion could not attain a fundamental artist education and neither could the specialized audience be given more up-to-date information and direct experiences with contemporaneity. Facing the continuation of the dictatorship under Marcelo Caetano's government (1968-1974), the feeling was that of disappointment. A growing discontent was also felt due to an absurd and unsolvable colonial war that began in 1961. In the cultural spheres, in the students' milieu and amongst the youth in general, frustration was growing; was spreading with the aloofness with which the State treated the major social and cultural turnabouts that the decade had experienced internationally. The rise and death of President Kennedy, the political and ideological battles for Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the hippie movement, the pop revolution and May 68 - only the distorted, censored echoes reached Portugal through the minute urban cultural elites. In the visual arts, the 60s were an epoch of experimentation, of the convergence of several aesthetic movements and trends, namely pop art, the "nouveau réalisme", op art, minimalism, conceptual art, art povera, video art, performance, body art and land art. It is also the decade of the death of Duchamp (1968). Within Portuguese context the 50s had been a period of the continuity of previous aesthetic solutions focused on the persistent dialectics between figuration and abstraction and whose protagonists were split, by and large, between neorealists, surrealists and abstractionists. It is in this circumstance that the oeuvre of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, an original blending of figuration and abstraction, strongly personalised, emerges as the grandest expression of this period. It would also be present significantly in the following decades. In the 60s, one would witness the growth of a new artistic situation specifically underlined by the emergence of a new generation of artists and cultural agents. Also, the consolidation of new tendencies of national artistic production reflected the need to be in tune with international languages, largely due to the emigration of a great number of artists, something that also would occur throughout the 70s. To leave one's country temporarily or permanently in accord to the general emigration flux of the time was the option of many artists. They did this for political reasons, as a solution sought for a career or even to simply come into contact with new but inaccessible tendencies. In this circumstance, one should mention that England welcomed António Areal, Rolando Sá Nogueira, Mário Cesariny, Menez, Paula Rego, João Cutileiro, Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, Ângelo de Sousa, Alberto Carneiro, Eduardo Batarda, António Sena, João Vieira, Ruy Leitão, João Penalva and Graça Pereira Coutinho. As for Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, Costa Pinheiro, Escada and João Vieira, this group would meet in Paris, where they would assemble the KWY group; this same city was visited by António Dacosta, Júlio Pomar, Jorge Martins and Manuel Baptista. A certain effort of renewal opened the way to an approach towards international art. Moreover, the newly-founded Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation aided substantially through scholarships, allowing for the emigration of these artists. There was a new mode of looking at the artistic phenomenon, from the largest collective exhibitions of the time (opening the decade, in 1961, the 2nd Exhibition of Visual Arts at the Gulbenkian Foundation) to the establishment of new art galleries that brought new dynamics to the Portuguese market.       Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Les Degrés, 1964. Têmpera sobre tela, 194,5 x 130 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira.   Lourdes Castro, Caixa de alumínio em caixa de aguarela, 1963. Assemblage, 52 x 52 cm. Col. Mr. e Mrs. Jan Voss. DR/ Cortesia Assírio & Alvim.   Armando Alves, Objecto, 1969. Madeira pintada, 100 x 63 x 34 cm. Col. Fundação de Serralves. DR/ Cortesia Fundação de Serralves.   During the first half of the decade only the gallery of the daily Diário de Notícias (in Lisbon), the Divulgação Gallery (in Lisbon and Porto, and whose director was Fernando Pernes), the Alvarez Gallery and the artists' association Árvore (both in Porto) gave for the first time small steps towards the marketing of visual artists. Only in 1964 with the newfangled experience of the bookshop-galleries such as Buchholz and Galeria III, and after the opening of new galleries in the turn of the decade, the new art market would stimulate artistic practices.   Nonetheless, one would have to wait for the instauration of democracy to sever the ties with an extended unsustainable situation but whose most profound transformation, heralded by the aesthetical ruptures of many artists of the 60s would only have its most effective cultural consequences after the post-revolutionary convulsions in the early 80s.       José Escada, S/ título, recorte azul, 1968. Papel recortado sobre papel, 31,5 x 48 cm. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. Laura Castro e Caldas e Paulo Cintra.   José Escada, S/ título, recorte rosa, 1968. Papel recortado sobre papel, 31,5 x 48 cm. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. Laura Castro e Caldas e Paulo Cintra.   José Escada, S/ título, recorte branco, 1968. Papel recortado sobre papel, 31,5 x 48 cm. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. Laura Castro e Caldas e Paulo Cintra.   Shifting to a more descriptive panorama of the most important artistic production of this period, we should begin by referring and following a simple chronological order to a group of artists that we can gather within painting and figuration, although each with very differentiated courses and options. Joaquim Rodrigo, after beginning his career in the post-war years in an abstractionist vein, created in the 60s a systematic code of pictorial signs and rules of representation that he would maintain until the end of his life. António Dacosta, a historical surrealist, after abandoning painting in the 40s would come back to it in the 80s with a remarkable original trait. Júlio Pomar, who began in the 50s as a neorealist, would develop different painting modes through which he worked figuration, body and movement. Menez, who painted abstract landscapes in the 60s, would approach a more mythical and narrative figuration later on. Paula Rego, departing from the brutality figurations of the 50s, revolutionised methods and processes until she reached a painting with more classicizing resonances in which her great authoritive power is affirmed and reinforced, which brought about her full consecration.     João Vieira, Uma Rosa É, 1968. Óleo sobre tela, 200 x 161 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira.         Álvaro Lapa, Página, 1965. Flow-master, tinta de água e acrílico sobe papel, 61 x 43 cm. Col. particular. Mário de Oliveira.     Another group of artists, whose public affirmation is set in the 60s, preferably insisted in an approach to painting through the analysis of its formal and structural constitutive elements. This group includes Ângelo de Sousa, António Sena, Jorge Martins, João Vieira and Manuel Baptista. The aspects that are at stake here are the place, the light, the colour, the sign, the trace. Jorge Martins researched on light and on painting itself, creating grids and small compartments in which he inserted stories, characters and objects, in which he interchanges with the representation of volumes and folds, referencing the cinematographic universe. Manuel Baptista, after abstract paintings of an informalist nature, employed diverse techniques from collage, relieves and object-paintings in the mid 60s to the use of the monochrome and cut-out canvases. It is also during this period that João Vieira would come across the theme that would be central to his entire oeuvre: the alphabet and the plasticity of the words, whether in his paintings or in his installations and performances. With his object-letters, Vieira introduces the "happening" for the first time in Portugal, as a result of his coming into contact with Vostell, in Malpartida de Cáceres.   These works would follow a more intellectualised and conceptualizing path, as for instances with Fernando Calhau, Pires Vieira and Michael Biberstein, at an early stage of his career. To mention a peculiar example of the convergence of writing and the references to literature, one should emphasize the name of Álvaro Lapa.   António Areal is another reference in the history of the Portuguese art of these times. Not only for his pictorial and sculptoric oeuvre, but also for his work of theoretical reflection, expressed in texts such as Textos de crítica e de combate na vanguarda das artes visuais (Critical and Combating Texts in the Avant-Gardes of the Visual Arts, 1970). After a first surrealist and gestualist stage of his career, he would approach the relationship between figurative and abstract art with paintings and objects clearly influenced by conceptual concerns.   Joaquim Bravo, with a literary education similar to Álvaro Lapa's and António Areal's, extended his artistic practices to painting, sculpture and drawing, producing a remarkable series of sculptures during the 60s.   A group that we can associate to a certain pop ambience in a very broad sense - which includes the "nouveau réalisme" and "narrative figuration" - allows us to gather the works produced in the late 60s and early 70s by authors such as Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, Costa Pinheiro, António Palolo and Eduardo Batarda, which would follow very diverse courses. Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, Costa Pinheiro, Escada and João Vieira along with Christo and Jan Voss, would form in Paris the group called KWY (Ka Vamos Yndo) and the magazine with the same name. The group's aesthetical solutions were presented in 1960 at the SNBA (National Society of Fine Arts).   Nadir Afonso, Espacilimitado, 1958. Óleo sobre tela, 80 x 147 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira. Artur Rosa, Entrada de Um Cubo Numa Malha Logarítmica (Explosão-Esfera), 1968/69. Técnica mista sobre alumínio, 350 x 1500 cm (ext. 600 cm). Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Carlos Azevedo.   Still following this pop-related line, we can associate the works of Ruy Leitão, usually done on paper with very bright colours and recurring elements. His was a rich and personal pictorial universe that would be cut short by his death in 1976. António Charrua, after an Expressionistic phase would turn to the association of colours and abstract forms.   Rolando Sá Nogueira, a painter already active in the 50s, during which time he showed preference for a somewhat naïve figurativism, would then embrace in the 60s the aesthetics of pop art after his stay in London (1961-1964), expressed collages of great artistic freedom.   Nikias Skapinakis used a figurativism of very rich chromatics during the 50s, as a consistent alternative to the period's most common trends, namely neorealism, surrealism and abstractionism. In the 60s, he would create a series of landscapes and group portraits that can be read as a sociological portrait of the whole era.       António Areal, Mês de Marte, 1966. Óleo e esmalte sobre platex, 54 x 65 cm. Col. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. Mário de Oliveira.   Sá Nogueira, Highlife, 1964. Colagem e óleo sobre tela, 53,5 x 38 cm. Col. Centro de Arte / Col. Manuel de Brito. DR/ Cortesia Galeria III.   Joaquim Bravo, The Hunting of the Snark, anos 60. Tinta industrial e colagem sobre papel colado em platex, 76,5 x 95 cm. Col. Maria de Lourdes Bravo. José Manuel Costa Alves.     Eduardo Nery, Estructura Nº 10, 1968. Óleo sobre madeira com caixa em relevo, 125 x 100 cm. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / CAMJAP. José Manuel Costa Alves.         Ernesto de Sousa, Encontro no Guincho, 1969. Ernesto de Sousa e o actor João Luís Gomes. Manuel Torres / Cortesia Espólio Ernesto de Sousa.         Alberto Carneiro, O Canavial: Memória / Metamorfose de um corpo ausente (detalhe), 1968. Canas, fitas adesivas coloridas, ráfia, letras e algarismos, dim. variáveis. Col. Caixa Geral de Depósitos. DR/ Cortesia Galeria Fernando Santos.   Noronha da Costa, one of the most important artists of the time, alongside being a painter, a sculptor, an architect and a cinema director, intensified his concerns through the sheer visibility and physicality of his objects. His works incorporate mirrors that allow for the objects to be representational of themselves but also to be used as the platform for playful forms and for appearing/disappearing spaces. By the end of the 60s the artist turned to a pictorial language, maintaining these visual explorations even if using "sfumato" or blurred ambiences through which one can picture fragments of people, places, landscapes, candles or other lightning elements.   This is the period when Costa Pinheiro creates his most known series - Reis (Kings) - and presents it for the first time in 1966 in Germany. In a certain manner, the author revisits in this series Portuguese history, using suggestive iconographical attributes for the several monarchs thus opening up the national collective memory theme, which, as it happened in the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, would characterise Costa Pinheiro's works in the next decades.   Employing a figurative vocabulary that is basically founded on naïve principles and skilled in many, variegated styles, references and ever renewed materials, José de Guimarães maintains a very personal artistic practice. Since then he has followed a consolidated and successful career both in Portugal and abroad.   Still another group of artists that one should mention is related to the specific formulations of op art. Their works are marked by mathematical rigour, the use of geometrical elements and by researches on the fields of perception and optical tension, Artur Rosa, also an architect multiplies and deconstructs forms in space with rhythms and movements that create perception and illusion games. Through a diverse work that comprised painting, drawing, photography and public interventions, Eduardo Nery's oeuvre was also constructed upon the repetition of elements and the examination of light and optical illusions. Eduardo Luiz, who lived in France for many years, created three-dimensional spaces in pictorial surfaces by using the "trompe l'oeil" effect in a particular manner, with Surrealist allusions to the suspension of time and space.   In Porto, the group Os Quatro Vintes (The Four Twenties) was formed, comprised of Ângelo de Sousa, Jorge Pinheiro, José Rodrigues and Armando Alves. They were associated to the Fine Arts School and lo the Árvore Cooperative - a space opened to experimentation and alternatives to the regime's culture. Between 1968 and 1972, combining their individual clout they attempted to reach substantial visibility, in order to call upon people's attention to the cultural weakness of the northern city and to reflect upon new visions of sculpture. Yet they were not looking for the assumption of a coherent, united visual program, as we would notice through the diversity of the individual courses of each one of the group's members.   Within the field of sculpture, João Cutileiro developed themes related to the human body and to sexuality and by introducing many innovative forms from which emerge warriors, trees and women. In 1966 the artist turns exclusively to working with marble. His education in London in the second half of the 50s was of paramount importance to his approach, and subsequently the whole country, creating new sculptoric languages and making Cutileiros a household name for the following generations of sculptors.   The 60s are referred to by some historians as being a period of ruptures. It was, undoubtedly, a moment of change but a change that went together with continuities. It was also the moment when Portuguese artists were able, simultaneously with the international languages of the time, to introduce aesthetic researches and formulations. This would result in very mature works and individual courses with substantial recognition. It is throughout these years that many artists' careers were drawn and made known, many of whom are active today and who would assume a preponderant role in the panorama of Portuguese contemporary art.         Eduardo Batarda, O Sr Professor C. J. P. Na Hora do Maior Movimento, 1965. Acrílico sobre madeira, 100 x 60 cm. Col. Mário Cesariny. José Manuel Costa Alves.   Costa Pinheiro, D. Inês de Castro, 1966. Óleo sobre tela, 170 x 135 cm. Col. Centro de Arte / Col. Manuel de Brito. Carlos Pombo da Cruz Monteiro - Arquivo Nacional de Fotografia.   João Cutileiro, Guerreiro com Caveira de Touro, 1963. Polyester, pó de bronze e fibra de vidro, 65 x 24 x 13 cm. Col. Dr. Mário Soares. João Cutileiro Jr.   Armando Alves, Jorge Pinheiro, Ângelo de Sousa e José Rodrigues, Grupo Os Quatro Vintes em 1970. Col. Galeria Alvarez Arte Contemporânea. Ursa Zangger. Ficha Técnica | Credits