Portrait of the architect José Pacheco, a central figure in the context of early twentieth-century Portuguese modernism. He was founder of an art gallery (in 1916) were Almada held his second solo exhibition; both co-authored with the musician Ruy Coelho (1889-1986) a manifesto on the occasion of the Ballets Russes’ coming to Lisbon (1917). He entertained, furthermore, the polemical attempt by young artists in the early twenties to take control of the National Society of the Fine Arts, held to be a bastion of tradition, and was co-founder and editor of the Contemporânea magazine, published between 1922 and 1926 in Lisbon. Almada collaborated in all issues of the magazine, creating covers, vignettes, drawings and texts.* There is another known portrait of Pacheco by Almada, belonging to the collection of Jorge de Brito, also dated from 1921.

* Some works by Almada published in Contemporânea belong to the CAM collection. See inventory numbers DP154, DP161, DP179, DP210 and DP213.

SAF

May 2010