Through the initiative of the journalist Norberto de Araújo, from the newspaper Diário de Lisboa, and that of the architect José Pacheco, editor of Contemporânea magazine, the decoration of the Brasileira café in Chiado, on the occasion of its remodelling in 1924-1925, was offered to the hands of the modernists Eduardo Viana, António Soares, Jorge Barradas, Stuart Carvalhais, Bernardo Marques, José Pacheco and José de Almada Negreiros. Almada executed the first and the third decorative panels in the western wing: these Bathers and a Self-Portrait in a Group, with the artist sitting at one of the tables at the café. Though they were negatively received and harshly criticized by most of the art critics and by the frequenters of the Brasileira, the paintings transformed the café into the only place in the Portuguese capital where one could see modernist painting.

SAF

May 2010