This work was destined for the Bristol Club, an establishment founded in 1918 in the centre of Lisbon. It was one of the works commissioned to several artists on the occasion of the remodelling of the Club in 1926. As is justly stated in an article dedicated to this ‘manifestation of modern art’ (Contemporânea, May 1926, p. 52), this group of artists represented part of ‘the greatest artist of the new generation’. Besides Almada Negreiros, we find the architect Carlos Ramos, the sculptors Leopoldo de Almeida and Canto da Maia, and the painters Guilherme Filipe, Ruy Vaz, Meneses Ferreira, António Soares and Eduardo Viana. In the same article, Mário Ribeiro, the owner of the Bristol Club and responsible for its transformation into a true ‘House of the Artists’, is lauded as ‘more than just a practical intelligence: a true artist’.

 

Mário Ribeiro lent Almada’s Nude, together with twelve other paintings that decorated the club, for the II Salão de Outono (II Autumn Salon, in the National Society of the Fine Arts, Lisbon), an exhibition organized by José Pacheco, editor of the Contemporânea magazine, in November 1926. The art critic Manoel de Sousa Pinto wrote about this work in an article about the exhibition (Ilustração, 1 December 1926, p. 16):

It is some sort of […] celestial Venus, elongated and transparent, sprouted from the author’s talent […]. Destined for a woman’s dressing room [in the Bristol Club], this painting will be most adequately placed.

 

SAF

 

May 2010