Pessoa. All Art Is a Form of Literature, Exhibition, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid: 7 February-7 May 2018

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Exhibition exploring the work of Pessoa, one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was a prolific Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and philosopher. He invented and wrote under more than a hundred different names, allowing him to express avant-garde, unpopular or extreme ideas. However, he did not accept the word pseudonym to describe these alter-egos because he felt that it didn’t capture their independent intellectual life, so instead he called them heteronyms, therefore further distancing himself from the views they expressed.

The exhibition Pessoa. All Art Is a Form of Literature takes its title from a quote by Álvaro de Campos, one of Fernando Pessoa’s many heteronyms. It explores some of the terms coined by Pessoa, many of which are ‘isms’, which now characterise Portuguese modernity. To contextualise Pessoa’s lines of thought, the exhibition displays a selection of magazines published from this period which had major aesthetic and ideological influence on the Portuguese intellectuals at the start of the early 20th century. These magazines functioned as a sounding board for avant-garde ideas, and include the writings of Pessoa and his contemporaries.

Drawing on these texts and a selection of works by modernist Portuguese artists, the exhibition re-creates a visual and literary account of the Portuguese aesthetic currents at the start of the 20th century.

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Sabatini Building, Floor 1, Calle de Santa Isabel, 52, Madrid 28012

Opening hours

Monday, Wednesday-Saturday, 10.00-21.00

Sunday, 10.00-19.00

Tuesday, closed

José de Almada Negreiros, Retrato de Fernando Pessoa, 1964. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian - Coleção Moderna
José de Almada Negreiros, Retrato de Fernando Pessoa, 1964. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian - Coleção Moderna

Opening Hours

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