Vieira da Silva
Arpad Szenes
Millennium bcp Collection
Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva Foundation
14 November 2013 - 2 Februar y 2014
The Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva Foundation
presents Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes in the Millennium bcp
Collection, an exhibition that displays, for the first time
in Portugal, the complete set of original works by Vieira
da Silva and Arpad Szenes featured in the Millennium
bcp’s art collection.
This exhibition came to be thanks to the Millennium
bcp’s remarkable and diverse cultural assets, namely
its art collection, which follows the international
model for establishing large corporate collections as
an important cultural investment that illustrates the
institution’s varied interventions in the artistic field.
The collection comprises elements that were amassed
over time by a number of financial institutions and
have been since studied, preserved and augmented
with the objective of divulging and promoting
Portuguese art. Its painting section contains several
important groups of works, such as the one dealing
with Naturalist art or their remarkable set of pieces
by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Vieira da Silva’s work
actually became the centre around which a number of
paintings by other artists, namely Arpad Szenes, was
gathered under the general heading of Abstraction.
The present exhibition, curated by Raquel Henriques
da Silva, displays all the works by Vieira da Silva and
Arpad Szenes in the Millennium bcp Collection
alongside pieces from the collection of the Arpad
Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation, thus generating a
Praça das Amoreiras, 56
1250-020 Lisboa - Portugal
Tel. ( 351) 21 388 00 44/53
Fax: (351) 21 388 00 39
E.mail: [email protected]
www.fasvs.pt
number of interesting and innovative connections.
The set of works on which the exhibition and its
accompanying catalogue are based combines eight oil
paintings by Arpad Szenes and fifteen pieces by Vieira
de Silva. Thus confronted, the works exemplify the
profound difference in poetics between these two
painters, united otherwise by eternal love, complete
selflessness and a commitment to the artistic modernity of their time in Paris, which Abstractionism
intended to unify. The exhibition also includes two
tapestries from the Millennium bcp Collection: Lisboa
ao entardecer [Lisbon in the evening], 1979, and
Biblioteca [Library], 1981. Though made without input
from the artist at the Portalegre Tapestry Manufacture,
both pieces nonetheless exemplify the importance of
colour in Vieira da Silva’s poetics – in the creation of
her dizzying architectures and spaces –, as well as the
artisanal quality of her approach, which magnificently
emulates the crafts of such ancestral arts as ceramics
and tapestry. According to curator Raquel Henriques
da Silva, “the reason behind this exhibition and its
catalogue […] [is] to divulge […] these pieces, in which
the passion of their creator still pulses. To achieve that
goal, collectors, both original and current, are the
essential partners of the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva
Foundation, which has been appointed by Vieira da
Silva as the immortal body of her love of Lisbon and
Portuguese culture.”
Schedule Wednesday to Sunday, from
10h00 to 18h00.
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and
holidays.
Entrance fee 4,00 €.
Free entrance on Sundays (10h0014h00), and otherwise for young
people up to 14 years old and
members of A.P.O.M./I.C.O.M./
I.C.O.M.O.S./A.I.C.A. and the Press.
50% discount for students, retired
persons, teachers and holders of
Lisboa Card.
Guided tours Wednesday to Sunday,
between 10h00 to 17h00, by previous
appointment.
Educational workshops for children
during the weekends, by previous
appointment.