07 February, 2018 - 07 May, 2018
MNCARS, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Curated: Ana Ara, João Fernandes

The exhibition "Pessoa. All Art is a Form of Literature" takes its title from a quote by Álvaro de Campos, one of the most avant-garde heteronyms created by Fernando Pessoa (Lisbon, 1888–1935), and published in the influential Portuguese magazine Presença.

The prolific output of texts accountable to over 100 heteronyms saw Pessoa forge his own avant-garde to become a peerless writer on the crisis of the modern subject and its convictions, transposing his work into a many-sided otherness akin to his own existential disorientation.

Paulism, intersectionism and sensacionism are just some of the terms coined by the poet in his numerous texts and underpin the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese modernity. This exhibition draws on these isms to construct a visual account of the Portuguese scene, bringing together a selection of works by figures such as José de Almada Negreiros, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Eduardo Viana, Sarah Afonso and Júlio, among others, to focus on the primary aesthetic movements in Portugal from the turn of the twentieth century to 1935. Said movements acknowledged the inevitable influence of predominant European trends whilst also attempting to create some kind of distance.

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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
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