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: the first representing two Banhistas [Bathers] and this self-portrait in a group, with the artist sitting at one of the tables at the café.

The four figures represented in this painting are identified (from left to right) as Almada Negreiros, the Spanish dancer and singer Julia de Aguilar, the actress Aurora Gil, and the scientist Francisco Nazareth. Some of the decorative panels, including this one, had been previously exhibited in the I Salão de Outono [I Autumn Salon] at the National Society of the Fine Arts in Lisbon, in January 1925. 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.

Sara Afonso-Ferreira

May 2010