Sarah Affonso and Folk Art from the Minho
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Date
12 Jul – 07 Oct 2019
- Closed on Tuesday
Location
Founder’s Collection – Lower Gallery Av. de Berna, 45A, Lisbon Maximum capactity: 25 visitors
This exhibition focuses on the relationship between the work of Sarah Affonso and the popular art of the Minho region. Often remembered as the wife of Almada Negreiros, Sarah Affonso was a modernist artist in her own right, with a remarkable career.
The Gulbenkian Museum is celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth of Sarah Affonso (1899-1983), a Portuguese modernist painter whose work has not been widely researched or exhibited to date. Very often remembered as the wife of renowned Portuguese artist Almada Negreiros, she was an artist in her own right, with a remarkable career, which is revisited in this exhibition.
This exhibition examines Sarah Affonso’s singular relationship with the popular art and culture of the Minho, a region in the North of Portugal where she lived during her childhood and adolescence, between 1904 and 1915.
The region’s distinctive features – its traditions, fairs, processions and pilgrimages – lived on in the artist’s memory, and would come to feature prominently in her work from 1932 to 1933.
During this period, Affonso departed from her customary portraits in order to incorporate specific aspects of the Minho vernacular in her compositions.
The exhibition displays the artist’s work alongside examples of the ceramics, textiles, and silverwork that make up part of the visual lexicon that inspired her, some on loan from Portuguese museums and collectors.
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum marks this anniversary together with the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Museu do Chiado, which will also dedicate an exhibition to the artist, opening in September.
Curator: Ana Vasconcelos
VIDEOS
VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION
– ExpressoA exposição da Gulbenkian aposta nas raízes populares da artista (…), com uma escolha exemplar de figurado de Barcelos, de rocas, fusos, marcas, espadelas e cangas de gado lavradas e gravadas, não esquecendo também a filigrana e o bordado.
Topics
Portraits
‘Green’ paintings
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Portraits
0297 Sarah Affonso, Untitled, 1930, oil on canvas, Private Collection 
1265 Sarah Affonso, Sem título, 1932, óleo sobre tela, Coleção Aurora Magalhães Although Sarah Affonso painted many portraits during the second half of the 1920s, mostly of children, as well as siblings and various friends, the early 1930s saw her develop an interest in portraits of women, in which the ‘popular’ theme became more visible.
These are portraits of anonymous women, wearing headscarves, who can be classified as ‘peasant women.’ Their depiction, however, reveals a character close to the classical portraits of great dignitaries, which gives these women an almost symbolic presence (at the same time as questioning the characteristics of social representation in traditional portrait painting).
The artist’s power lies in capturing the strong presence of these figures, in the suggestion of light, the colour contrasts between figure and background, the harmonisation of the colour of the headscarves and the colour of the clothing, the way the observer’s attention is expertly led towards the women’s faces and hands, which mark the psychological cadence of the portrait.
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‘Green’ paintings
1274 Sarah Affonso. Untitled, 1936. Oil on canvas. Private Collection 
0301 Sarah Affonso. 'Peasant women'. Undated. Oil on canvas. Private Collection 
1148 Sarah Affonso. 'Girl an ox', [1933]. Oil on canvas. Private Collection Although her painting was always underpinned by the importance of the figure, Sarah Affonso rediscovered the Minho region in 1933, regarding it as a ‘region waiting for artists.’
Some paintings from that year and up to 1936 move away from the more classical treatment of the portrait and seek to depict the region and particular aspects of its nature. These works focus on the feminine, matriarchal side, simultaneously contemplative and active, of that same nature which is, as well, almost a natural state. In them, the treatment of the figure is cursory, deliberately unfinished, almost rough, highlighting the hands and feet, which are shown as tools of labour and of contact with the soil, with the children who, in turn, link the women to the fertility of the earth.
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Complementary Programs
Talk with the curator Ana Vasconcelos and guests
Friday, 12 July, 17:00
Saturday, 14 September, 16:00
In Portuguese only
Talk with the curator Ana Vasconcelos
Saturday, 5 October, 15:00
In Portuguese only
Guided tours
Saturdays, 27 July; 21 September, 15:00
In Portuguese only
Guided tours in Portuguese, English or French
Booking
(+351) 217 823 800
[email protected]
More information
[email protected]
Conversations About Sarah Affonso
Tuesday, 24 September, 14:30
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