The Prime Minister’s official residence in Lisbon is today hosting the inauguration of another edition of the “Art in São Bento” initiative, this time with works by 33 Portuguese artists from the Manuel de Brito Collection.
The exhibition, curated by Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues, opens today and to the public on Thursday, when the doors will be open between 3pm and 7pm, with free admission.
The exhibition features works by, among others, Ana Vidigal, António Dacosta, António Palolo, Eduardo Batarda, Helena Almeida, Júlio Pomar, Lourdes Castro, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Noronha da Costa, Paula Rego and Rui Sanches.
“Comprising more than 2,000 works by Portuguese and foreign artists, the Manuel de Brito Collection is one of the most important private collections of 20th century Portuguese art. This collection began to be built up in the 1960s by Manuel de Brito (1928-2005), a gallerist and key figure in Portuguese culture, who founded the oldest active gallery in Lisbon, Galeria 111, which celebrates its 60th anniversary next year,” reads the press release about the initiative.
Every year, the Prime Minister’s Official Residence, in the Palacete de São Bento, hosts a selection of works by Portuguese artists from a contemporary art collection, in an initiative created in 2017 with the aim of “affirming the vitality of national artistic creation and projecting the image of an innovative country”, according to a text from the organization.
In previous editions of Arte em São Bento, the Official Residence has hosted the Serralves Collection (2017), the António Cachola Collection/Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (2018), the Norlinda and José Lima Collection (2019), the Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection (2020), the AA Collection by Ana Cristina and António Albertino Santos (2021) and the Peter Meeker Collection by Pedro Álvares Ribeiro (2022).
The exhibition runs until September 2024, and can be visited on the first Sunday of each month.
