Portuguese Art

Paper Summary:

The paper analyzes the early evolution of contemporary art in Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s in order to show how the emergence of a Portuguese avant-garde could be considered on a par with similar trends happening elsewhere in the art world. The paper discusses the artwork of Helena Almeida, Juliao Sarmento, Pedro Calapez, Rui Chafes, Julia Ventura and Antonio Olaio. The paper concludes that the 1970s and 1980s linked Portugal to the larger Western art world. Pictures of the artwork of Helena Almeida, Julia Ventura and Antonio Olaio are included with the paper.

From the Paper:

"At the time of Portugal's liberation from an oppressive dictatorship, conceptual practices were all the rage in the Western art world. Such practices immediately piqued the interest of Portuguese artists upon exposure, and many Portuguese artists of the 1970s began to integrate such an approach into their own work. Helena Almeida was chief among these for whom older models were no longer valid; she imbued her work of this period with a confrontational strand that often served to question the very medium in which she was working. One startling example of this is the photographic work Tela Habitada of 1976, in which the artist covered a photograph of her head with a line of blue paint, effectively erasing her own image while disrupting the alleged purity of the photographic medium."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Lapa, Pedro. "A Brief History of Portuguese Contemporary Art." In Contemporary Art from Portugal. Retrieved 11 March 2008 from: www.ecb.int/events/pdf/art/Portugal.pdf.
• Leal, Joana Cunha. "Rui Chafes." Retrieved 11 March 2008 from: http://www.camjap.gulbenkian.pt/Gallery/%7Be45beeae-8cbf-4918-bfdf-4bb1d025bb2f%7D/2f0e1189-923e-44b3-b0f6-c7178217ca51.pdf.

More papers on Portuguese Art:

• Analytical Essay # 5931 : "The Portuguese" by George Braque"
• Research Paper # 6610 : "The History of the Portuguese Language"
• Research Paper # 68727 : "Orientalist Art Market "

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: