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The piece created in 1950 is currently in the José de Figueiredo Laboratory (LJF), in the hands of a multidisciplinary group of restoration specialists, who accepted the challenge of replacing dozens of wires placed by Almada on a plywood almost two meters thick. tall and wide, with drawing, painting and photographic reproductions of the center panels.
“For the first time a very complex piece will be shown to the public, finally dated, and practically unmatched in the work of Almada Negreiros”, according to researcher Simão Palmeirim, who accompanied the Lusa agency on a visit to the LJF, an entity supervised by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage (DGPC), whose mission is to study, intervene and safeguard cultural heritage.
During a visit to the space where the technicians are still carrying out the restoration, Simão Palmeirim, a painting specialist, said that the work, with the attributed title “Study on the panels of the panels of S. Vicente” (1950), “will reveal novelties very important “, that is,” a kind of first geometric language of the artist “on the 15th century polyptych, by the painter Nuno Gonçalves.
This geometric language appears with great complexity in this study and, due to its state of progressive degradation, over 80 years, it reached the hands of restoration specialists in a tangle of fallen wires, which it was necessary to carefully analyze and understand how they had been plotted and joined.
Almada Negreiros carefully arranged the threads in 11 different colors in a constellation of squares, pentagons, polygons, hexagons and lines.
In the center of the piece, where he placed the images of the panels, what the specialists called “the diamond” stands out, due to the multiple geometric facets that it presents, the result of the composition studies that the artist carried out dedicated to the masterpiece of Nuno Gonçalves. .
José Almada Negreiros, exponent of Portuguese modernism, “fell in love from a very young age with several paintings in the Museum of Ancient Art, and the Panels of São Vicente concentrated many of their efforts on composition studies. In this study, we have many pentagons, hexagons , regular figures worked in cotton thread, in a unique case that did not happen again in Almada’s work ”, explained to Lusa Simão Palmeirim, curator of the exhibition where the piece will be presented, in October.
“We are facing a study that already has the characteristics of a work of art in its own right, due to its complexity, due to the laborious work that it will have carried out, and that deserves this celebration on the occasion of the death of Almada”, who died 50 years ago said the researcher. .
But before entering the restoration phase, the piece was disinfected from the insects that attacked it, photographed and analyzed by specialists in the areas of biology, paint, paper, textiles and photography, Gabriela LJF’s division chief explained to Lusa. . Oak.
“The crossing of information between restoration specialists and researchers was very interesting, since the previous study of the work [realizado por Simão Palmeirim e Pedro Freitas] It has been essential to recover it ”, stressed the official.
During the analysis of the work in the laboratory, the specialists found, for example, that Almada “certainly did not work alone on this piece, and the threads she used were the ones she used to use to embroider”, revealed Paula Monteiro, textile curator-restorer .
“We had to make several decisions together, in particular about the state of degradation of the wires and the wires that held them. We had to decide if we were going to keep the wires or replace them, because the main objective was to preserve the work in its original form, and also the idea of Almada Negreiros, ”he explained, adding that the choice fell on the second option.
Then they faced another big challenge, figuring out how to put the cables in the correct orientation: “We are almost at the end, because we have already managed to replace practically all the cables, and safeguard Almada’s idea. the central blue wire, which justifies the motif of the two largest panels in the center and then tightening the lines, ”he said, referring to the“ diamond ”.
“We almost did a deconstruction of the composition and then we rebuilt it,” described the specialist, who worked together with Luís Pedro and Elsa Lopes, curators of the same textile field.
The team, whose work continues, also includes Ana Maria Fernandes, curator-restorer of paper, Mercês Lorena, curator-restorer of painting, and, in the analytical laboratory, the biologist Lilia Esteves, to whom she joins, from the laboratory photographic, the photographer Luís Piorro.
The restoration of this studio by Almada Negreiros is part of a larger project on the artist’s work and his geometric interpretation of various ancient paintings, which includes two exhibitions, one in Lisbon, at the National Museum of Ancient Art (MNAA), and another in the Batalha Monastery.
Amazed by the panels from the first time he saw them, the Portuguese modernist began a set of studies that would lead him to the creation of a theory, according to which he proposed a reconstruction of the altarpiece, with several paintings together, for the Chapel of the Founder, in the Monastery. of the battle.
An important work of European painting from the 15th century, attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves, the panels continue to intrigue art lovers and challenge the theories of historians and other specialists.
Questions remain unanswered about who the 57 figures around the double figuration of São Vicente really were, or who represented, at that time, arranged in this collective portrait, which began this year as the target of an ambitious restoration project. MNAA, which is expected to last at least three years.
One of the exhibitions is titled “Almada Negreiros y los Paneles – an altarpiece designed for the Batalha Monastery”, and it opens on October 15 in the Painted Ceiling Room of the MNAA, bringing together the pieces in which the artist presents his interpretation geometric. of various museum paintings, including the São Vicente panels.
For decades, Almada has dedicated himself to researching the arrangement of more than a dozen paintings in a single large altarpiece, which he claims was designed for the Batalha Monastery, the result of his studies, in a vast artistic production.
This exhibition is complemented by another, dedicated to the same theme, at the Batalha Monastery, which will open at the same time, under the title “Almada Negreiros and the Batalha Monastery – fifteen primitive paintings in an imaginary altarpiece”.
On the wall for which Almada designed the altarpiece he imagined, in the Chapel of the Founder of the Monastery, full-scale reproductions of MNAA works will be placed and, in the same chapel, various models and unpublished drawings of the Portuguese modernist will be exhibited.
In conversations between Simão Palmeirim – member of one of the centers linked to the Modernismo.pt project, active since 2013 – with the directors of MNAA and the Batalha Monastery, this proposal arose to hold the two exhibitions in partnership, to make the public a set of works that reveal the thought and geometric vocabulary of one of the most important Portuguese modernists.
Simão Palmeirim and Pedro Freitas are researchers from university centers that work with the Modernismo.pt Project, respectively, of the Center for Research and Studies of Fine Arts (CIEBA) / Institute of Studies of Literature and Tradition (IELT), Faculty of Social Sciences Sciences and Humanas at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and the Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT) at the Universidade de Lisboa.
Both exhibitions will be accompanied by the publication of an autonomous catalog, with texts resulting from recent research on the subject.
