According to the museum, a ceremony will be held today at 3 pm to formalize the donation.
"Pintura (Windows)", from around 1916, by Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887-1918), and "A las Cinco en Punto de la Tarde (homage to Garcia Llorca)", from 1960, by Manuel D'Assumpção ( 1926-1969), are paintings that will "enrich in a very significant way" the MNAC-MC collection, stressed the person in charge to Lusa. According to the director of the museum, Emília Ferreira, the two works are "of the greatest relevance to the history of Portuguese art in the 20th century" and were donated by the collector couple Pinto de Figueiredo, to whom the museum expresses "deep public recognition". for generosity.
The two pieces were bequeathed following the death of Jeanne Pinto de Figueiredo, widow of João Castanheira de Moura Pinto de Figueiredo (1917-1984), a jurist and writer, a friend of artists and a devotee of essays on visual arts and literature. He was also a passionate collector of modern art, a leading researcher and promoter of the work of the authors he devoted himself to, and a bibliophile, says a press release from the museum about the patron.
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso and Lucie de Souza Cardoso
As an author, he privileged an approach to the work of poets and painters, such as Cesário Verde, Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Manuel d'Assumpção, publishing the works "Album de Cesário Verde" (1978) and "A vida de Cesário Verde " (1981), "A Morte de Mário de Sá-Carneiro" (1983), translated into French by Éditions de la Différence, in 1992, and "Itinerário", text for the catalog of D'Assumpção, at Galeria Ottolini (1975 ), republished in the catalog of the homonymous exhibition, which the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation dedicated to the artist in 1985. In 2017, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of João Pinto de Figueiredo, the National Library of Portugal, in Lisbon, dedicated an exhibition to him , based on a donation from the widow, revealed the collector's estate.
The Chiado Museum was founded in 1911, as the National Museum of Contemporary Art, is located in the Convent of São Francisco, in the historic center of Lisbon, and its collection includes more than 5,000 pieces of art, in a chronological path from 1850 to the present day which includes painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and video.