Almada Negreiros and the St. Vincent Panels An imagined altarpiece for the Monastery of Batalha

Almada Negreiros (1893-1970) was one of the leading figures of Portuguese modernism. He dedicated himself to drawing, painting, literature, theatre, and, over the years, to discovering a universal basis for artistic creation. It was geometry that provided him with a tool for studying the artistic manifestations of the past and, at the same time, served as an inspiration for his own work.

Over several decades, Almada developed a proposal for joining together multiple paintings from this museum, imagining them forming a single altarpiece, which included the St. Vincent Panels, by Nuno Gonçalves. Based on geometrical presuppositions, he established the positioning of the works, suggesting that they were originally planned to be displayed in the Founder’s Chapel of the Monastery of Batalha. This research of his resulted in a unique production, blurring the frontiers between research and artistic creation.

Recently, some of his works have been studied by researchers from the areas of mathematics and fine art, who are interested in understanding the geometrical patterns in question. These studies made it possible to restore for this occasion the previously unseen Study in thread of the Panels of St. Vincent (1950). Also exhibited in this room are The fifteen panels of the Founder’s Chapel (1960), a work that has never previously been displayed in its complete form, and two drawings, also previously unseen, which show how Almada Negreiros developed his path to abstraction, based on a painting from the museum Ecce Homo.

Texto: MNAA

• MNAA