8. Abstracção

Fernando Lanhas, O10–50, 1950, Museu do Chiado

The first abstractionist experiences in Portugal surfaced in the second half of the decade of 1910, brought by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso and Guilherme Santa-Rita.

After an interregnum of over a decade, these two artists reinstated abstractionism in Paris. Vieira da Silva moved to Paris, with his widowed mother, in 1928, and it was there that he started a new artistic life, going to important schools and starting a collaboration with art buyers, which granted him the sale of a painting to MoMa in New York, right on that first year. António Pedro, who was disappointed with Law and Writing in Portugal, traveled temporarily to Paris to study in Sorbonne, where he studied Aesthetic and History of the Art alongside with big international figures. In 1935, he takes part in the creation of Dimensionism and signs the manifest together with Duchamp, Miró, Kandinsky, Calder and others. He tries to publish this manifest in Portugal, with no success. Dimensionism leads Pedro to trade poetry for painting and originates a compilation of abstract pieces that would be showcased among us, with very little impact. At the same time, he was opening the Up gallery, where he would promote his first individual exhibition in Portugal by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.

For two decades, abstract painting was practically not seen in Portugal, and it was only in 1953, that an exhibition held by Edgar Pillet, a French man, shook the country and divided the critiques. It then paved the way to the first abstractionist initiative, the First Hall of Abstract Art, in Galeria de Março in 1954, where the option for non-figurative art ended in itself. From there on, numerous artists incorporated abstractionism in their productions, compiling them into their own aesthetic, as had happened before with the surrealist artists in the exhibition of Azevedo, Lemos and Vespeira in 1952. This would later happen again and in the same way with the Pop Art influences.