“We have established a different approach for the biennial, and starting on August 10, we will be present in only three locations: the Côa Museum, the Municipal Auditorium of Peso da Régua, and in Alijó, with a public contemporary art gallery in the pool gardens. Another novelty is the extension of the Biennial over a year, until 2026, which didn’t happen in previous editions,” explained Nuno Canelas, the director and curator of the Douro Biennial, to Lusa today.
“Extending this initiative over a year gives the public more opportunities to appreciate the displayed art, making it easier than just in three months,” the curator told Lusa.
For Nuno Canelas, “the strong international emphasis has been a constant since 2001 [in the programming], with more than 50 countries present at the Douro Biennial, and internationally renowned artists in the field of contemporary printmaking.” “We maintain that tradition,” he assured.
According to the director of this international exhibition, “the Côa Museum, given its characteristics in the realm of rock art, is always a favorite location for the inauguration of the International Douro Print Biennial”: “It is our pearl, with a clear relationship between rock engraving and contemporary printmaking,” he added.
The International Douro Biennial was founded in 2001 with the ambition to decentralize culture and promote printmaking art, taking on the responsibility of being the country’s only graphic art biennial. “Its evolution places it today on an unimaginable level alongside the most important Biennials in the world,” according to the curator.
“Pursuing this purpose and achieved ambition, the Douro Biennial has overcome challenges of interiority, economic crises, cultural crises, and the very crisis of printmaking, knowing how to keep alive the principles of art and the autonomy of printmaking in the context of contemporary art,” continued Nuno Canelas.
For the director of the Biennial, the Côa Museum “establishes a unique dialogue on a global scale, placing rock engraving side by side with contemporary printmaking, transforming it into something unique from an artistic standpoint.”
“Anchored in the world’s oldest demarcated wine region – the Douro, a region awarded two UNESCO world heritage titles and globally recognized both for its wine-growing landscape and the archaeological heritage of the Côa Valley, which is the largest paleolithic engraving sanctuary in the world – the Douro is also the stage, in contemporary times, for one of the largest graphic art events, gathering a force and dimension that surpass national borders and projects towards infinite horizons,” he assured.
Much has contributed to this, “the tributes of traditional printmaking and its secular alchemies, but not less important, the renewed trends of digital printmaking and the new media at its disposal, giving it the autonomy it needs to subsist.”
In Nuno Canelas’s opinion, the open field to printmaking through new hybrid languages and non-toxic techniques has projected its impact in an innovative way with a long-desired vitality in its domains.
“To prove such a standard, we highlight the world-renowned honored artists,” who will be on display, such as Antoni Tàpies, Paula Rego, Vieira da Silva, Octave Landuyt, Gil Teixeira Lopes, Nadir Afonso, Bartolomeu dos Santos, Júlio Pomar, José de Guimarães, Silvestre Pestana, José Rodrigues, Ângelo de Sousa, Júlio Resende, Sá Nogueira, Graça Morais, Cruzeiro Seixas, Henrique Silva, Fernando Lanhas, Lima de Freitas, Irene Ribeiro, Herten, Iuji Hiratsuka, Noguchi Akèmi, Masataka Kuroyanaga, Tomiyuki Sakuta, and Weisbuch.
