It is a painting that depicts two artists who are part of the second generation of modernists in Portugal. Both studied at Escola Superior de Belas Artes in Lisbon and lived in Paris for a time. José Tagarro (1901-1931), born in Cartaxo, participated in several exhibitions presented at Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes in the 1920s. Waldemar da Costa (1904-1982), born in Belém do Pará, Brazil, and living in Portugal since 1910, exhibited alongside Sarah Affonso at the first Salão dos Independentes in 1930. It was in this environment that Sarah Affonso says she exchanged views on what she saw in museums, galleries and academies, on what other artists were painting and how they were interested in art. Despite the conventions of the time, she was the first woman to frequent the café A Brasileira, in Chiado, where she met and socialised with the modernist intellectuals gathered in Lisbon.

SP