A cremation ceremony will take place on Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Alto de S. João Cemetery in the capital.
Maria José Palla, a retired professor from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, passed away three days before her 82nd birthday.
A photographer, researcher, and expert in Languages and Literatures, History, and Arts, Maria José Palla lived in Paris during her exile from Portugal’s dictatorship and earned her doctorate at the Sorbonne University. Her dissertation focused on the symbolism of attire in Gil Vicente’s works, after a master’s thesis titled ‘Les Objets de civilisation dans l’oeuvre de Gil Vicente’, under the guidance of linguist and Lusitanist Paul Teyssier (1912-2002).
In Paris, Maria José Palla studied photography and cinema with filmmaker Jean Rouch (1917-2004) at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, after completing the course at the Institut Français de Photographie and attending the Ecole National de Photographie de Paris (Ecole de Vaugirard), leading her to an internship at the RL Dupuy agency in the 1960s.
With a diploma in Art History from the École du Louvre in Paris, she authored various books and articles on Gil Vicente, 16th-century theater, and Portuguese Renaissance painting.
Her works include ‘Dicionário das Personagens do Teatro de Gil Vicente’, ‘Do Essencial e do Supérfluo – Estudo lexical do traje e adornos em Gil Vicente’, and ‘Traje e Pintura – Grão Vasco e o Retábulo da Sé de Viseu’.
As a photographer, a passion she pursued for the last 40 years of her life, she held several exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, including ‘Arquivo’, revisiting four decades of work at the Appleton Cultural Association in Lisbon in 2022, and ‘Maria José Palla: o auto-retrato como natureza-morta – uma retrospetiva’, her most recent solo exhibition, which was showcased last year at the National Museum Frei Manuel do Cenáculo in Évora.
Until last May, the Graça Brandão Gallery in Lisbon displayed ‘Room next door’, an exhibition shared by Maria José Oliveira and Maria José Palla.
In 2022, the artist presented ‘Víctor Palla – Maria José Palla’ at the Art Center of São João da Madeira, marking her father’s centenary. Her father, an architect, designer, photographer, and painter, was a prominent figure in Lisbon’s modern scene during the 1950s to 1970s, reflecting their mutual expressions.
Maria José Palla’s numerous exhibitions throughout the country, Europe, and the East (Macau) include ‘Fragmentos de Um Discurso’ (2013), ‘Le Temps’ (2010), ‘A Roda do Tempo’ (2006), ‘Anatomia de Um Rosto’, ‘Faces da Melancolia’, ‘A Mulher sem Sombra’ (2001), and ‘Retratos de Poetas’ (1998), featuring close-ups of contemporary Portuguese literary figures, from António Franco Alexandre and Mário Cesariny to Nuno Júdice and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Eugénio de Andrade, and Pedro Tamen.
Maria José Palla taught Theater History, Portuguese Literature, French Literature, Renaissance Literature, and Literature and Other Arts – Photography, at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
With Manuel Villaverde Cabral, she translated ‘Hiroshima, mon amour’ by Marguerite Duras for Publicações Europa-América (1963), ‘Vida de Miguel Angelo’ by Romain Rolland for Presença do Homem (1967), and ‘Camus por Ele Próprio’ by Morvan Lebesque for Portugália Editora (1967). She also translated ‘Livre de Cuisine de l’Infante Maria du Portugal’ for the Institute of Medieval Studies at Universidade Nova.
Maria José Palla was born in Lisbon on July 30, 1943, the daughter of artist Zulcides Saraiva and photographer, architect, and designer Victor Palla.
