Galerias Municipais present are presenting the exhibition Não vá o diabo tecê-las! A Tapeçaria em diálogo a partir da coleção Millennium bcp/, curated by Rita Maia Gomes in the Torreão Nascente of the Cordoaria Nacional, in a collaboration between Lisboa Cultura and the Millennium bcp Foundation.
The Millennium bcp Foundation is presenting an unprecedented exhibition on Tapestry, offering a seductive and surprising journey through the universe of Portuguese tapestry. There are 86 works, 27 artists and more than 50 documents in an unprecedented exhibition approach that aims to highlight leading figures, institutions and events that constitute important milestones in the history of Portuguese tapestry, from 1946 onwards.
On the ground floor, the Millennium bcp Collection will be on display, with a remarkable collection of tapestries produced by the Portalegre Tapestry Manufactory. Visitors will be able to see the quality of the manufacture’s work, with tapestries produced from originals by the following artists: António da Costa Pinheiro, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, Graça Morais, Lourdes Castro, Luís Pinto-Coelho, Manuel Cargaleiro, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, José de Almada Negreiros, José de Guimarães, Júlio Resende and Júlio Pomar. The exhibition will be an excellent opportunity to get to know the ex-libris of Millennium bcp’s tapestry collection – a work by Guilherme Camarinha, a unique piece from 1961, which has recently been cleaned and restored and can now be appreciated in all its splendor.
At the same time as the work carried out and the notoriety achieved by the Portalegre Tapestry Manufactory over its 78 years of activity, tapestry has been asserting itself along another path, which will be revealed on Floor 1 using works from institutions, private collections and artists’ collections. The exhibition narrative illustrates and documents the research and experiences of artists who have been interested in exploring the plastic potential of tapestry – which is no longer exclusively a transposition of a painting, but is moving towards an author’s tapestry in which the artist is both the one who conceives and executes. A tapestry that expands in terms of techniques, materials and possibilities of spatial presence and is not limited to the wall and the two-dimensional register. From the late 1940s to the present day, this history will be anchored in works by: Altina Martins, Alves Dias, Amândio Silva, Charters de Almeida, Eduardo Nery, Flávia Monsaraz, Gisella Santi, Helena Lapas, Isabel Laginhas, João Abel Manta, Júlio Pomar, Margarida Reis, Maria Isabel Barreno, Mário Dionísio, Paula Rego and Teresa Segurado Pavão.
As part of the exhibition’s curatorial project, and in line with one of the Millennium bcp Foundation’s structural axes of action, a collaborative educational project was proposed and developed with the António Arroio (Lisbon) and Soares dos Reis (Porto) art schools, which took place during the 2023/2024 school year, with 12th grade students. Throughout the exhibition, the public will be able to see the work of students from the Audiovisual Communication course – specializing in film/video and photography. This work was carried out at the Portalegre Tapestry Manufactory, where the students studied and captured the spaces, the raw materials, the people, the long and complex process of tapestry production, revealing a less visible side of the mysterious and complex art of weaving.
The exhibition ends with a display of works produced by students from the Artistic Production course – specializing in textiles – who responded to the challenge of creating objects in dialogue with the Portalegre tapestries from the Millennium bcp Collection. The purpose of the selection is to envision possible directions for textile art in Portugal, highlighting the contribution of these two artistic schools to the appreciation and vitality of tapestry.
