Temporary exhibition at Sala do Tecto Pintado of the National Museum of Ancient Art
On display from october 15th 2020 to september 5th 2021
Curated by Simão Palmeirim
Over several decades, Almada Negreiros proposed a grouping of multiple paintings from the National Museum of Ancient Art, imagining them as a single altarpiece. Based on geometrical postulates, he defined the positioning of the works and stated that their original destination would have been a specific wall of the Batalha Monastery. This investigation resulted in an unparalleled artistic production that brings together ancient painting and geometry, effacing borders between art studies and art creation.
Recently some of his works were the subject of an in-depth study by investigators from the areas of Mathematics and art sciences in order to identify the geometrical tracings in question. This allowed the work Estudo em fio dos painéis de S. Vicente to be fully studied and restored, and be presented to the public for the first time.
In the Sala do Tecto Pintado, the room that hosted this exhibition, one could also see the work Os quinze painéis na Capela do Fundador (1960), never previously shown in its complete form, as well as two drawings, also never shown, that give us an idea how starting with Ecce Homo - a painting in the Museum - Almada developed his path towards abstraction.