The Collection Origins

The “Exposições Gerais de Artes Plásticas”/ The General Exhibitions of Art

Since the end of the 1950s the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, namely through its Fine Arts Department, acquired, either through purchase or donations from the many artists it has supported or awarded grants to, numerous works of Portuguese art. The Foundation also organized three major fine arts exhibitions, the first of which was held at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes in December 1957. According to José Sommer Ribeiro this exhibition was instrumental to the changes felt in the Portuguese artistic milieu: finally Portugal opened its doors to modern art. Besides the obvious goals – introducing, promoting and awarding the works done to date -, the exhibition allowed the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s directors and their staff to obtain a panoramic picture of the state of the arts in Portugal. The second exhibition was held in December 1961, architecture was included and the scope was widened to include “all forms and means of expression in Art”. This caused a significant increase in the number of works to be selected. Finally the third and last exhibition was held in July 1986, on occasion of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s 30th Anniversary. The hiatus from one exhibition to the other was explained by the increase, from the end of the 60s, in the amount of national initiatives promoted by other institutions, this explained why the Foundation had decided to make foreign art its priority. The third exhibition embraced new genres in the field of the arts, such as “Objects” and Installations, “Photography” and “Video”; and the artworks had to be dated post-1980, a “date internationally recognised as a significant turning point in Painting and Sculpture”. It is important to note that a considerable number of the artworks presented at this exhibition were integrated into the Modern Art Centre’s collection.

Acquisitions, Donations, Deposits

The acquisition of numerous works belonging to the private collection of the banker Jorge de Brito allowed the collection to provide a more faithful depiction of Portuguese Art form 1910 onwards, thus overcoming serious flaws. Numerous donations by artists, their relatives and collectors are also noteworthy: in particular those by Sonia Delaunay; Lúcia de Souza-Cardoso, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s widow; Maria Helena Viera da Silva and her husband the Hungarian painter Arpad; the Spanish sculptor Pablo Gargallo; the collector Jorge de Brito; and the parents of António Areal, the painter. Several artists and collectors, such as Lourdes Castro or José Paço d’Arcos, although unwilling to relinquish ownership of some works, readily agreed to deposit them at the Centre. The same was true for the Henry Moore sculpture that remained in the garden in front of the Modern Art Centre’s hall of windows on Floor 00 for fifteen years. An agreement was reached with the Henry Moore Foundation, in Leeds, that established a contractual deposit of the sculpture when it stayed in Lisbon after appearing at an important exhibition of the British artist’s work organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Recently the donation “nucleus” has increased with the donation of several works by Ruy Leitão and varied documentation offered by relatives and friends of the painter, as well as the donation of several of Fernando Calhau’s works made by his widow.

Thus in this manner the Modern Art Centre’s collection was built: a collection that allowed a global vision of artistic activity in Portugal throughout the 20th Century and into the present. Since 1983, the Foundation has sought to accompany striking artistic production through the acquisition of works by artists that have been representative of these past decades, without, however, neglecting to overcome the flaws that are being revealed by the study and exhibition of the collection. Several temporary exhibitions, namely the series titled 7 Artistas ao 10.º Mês(7 Artists on the 10th Month – a biennial edition since 1997), are held to accompany and present the work produced by young national artists.

Besides Portuguese art, the Modern Art Centre’s collection also includes nuclei of International art.

The relationships between our artists and foreign artists

On the one hand, and in compliance to the programming principles sketched prior to the creation of the Modern Art Centre, the collection contains a group of works by artists who either had close ties to or were important influences to their Portuguese colleagues, such as Sonia and Robert Delaunay, in the cases of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Eduardo Viana; Fernand Léger, Roger Bissière, Pierre Soulages, Joaquín Torres Garcia who were acquainted to Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and her husband Arpad Szenes, the Hungarian painter; or also the Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari. In this group of International presences the absence of a work by Amadeo Modigliani should be mentioned since he was a friend of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and they exhibited together in 1911.  

A second set of works, in which a large number of prints stand out, was either acquired or received through a donation, during group and individual exhibitions by foreign artists.

The British Nucleus

The third set of works is an important collection of British artworks acquired from 1959 to the present, although the core of this nucleus was gathered as a result of two endowments made by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to the British Council, the institution responsible for acquiring a significant amount of works by artists who at the time were very young. This nucleus has been added to, albeit in an uneven fashion, by buyers appointed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s UK Branch in 1968 and 1970, and from 1985 to the present. It has also been boosted by works acquired directly by the Modern Art Centre as is the case of the Antony Gormley sculpture acquired in 1995, or the Gilbert & George photograph incorporated as a result of the Ilha do Tesouro (Treasure Island) exhibition held in 1997. This exhibition presented a significant part of this collection alongside works loaned to complement the collection and thus creating an ideal collection of British art in the last forty years of the 20th Century.

The Armenian Nucleus

Finally, the last international set follows the work of several Armenian artists. Here, the presence of Arshile Gorky must be highlighted: the Modern Art Centre owns three works (two drawings and a painting), and is also the depositary of a significant set of his paintings, drawings, and three small sculptures, that belonged to his nephew Karlen Mooradian and are currently the property of the Diocese of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern).