The Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid will be showing the Pessoa. All Art Is a Form of Literature exhibit from February 7th to May 7th 2018.
The title of the exhibition, “Pessoa. All Art Is a Form of Literature”, is based off of a quote by Álvaro de Campos, one of the most avant-garde heteronyms created by Fernando Pessoa (Lisbon, 1888–1935), and published in the influential Portuguese magazine Presença. Paulism, Intersectionism, Sensacionism are just some of the terms coined by the poet in his scores of texts. This exhibition draws on these isms to put in place a visual account of the Portuguese scene, bringing together a selection of works by figures such as José de Almada Negreiros, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Eduardo Viana, Sarah Affonso and Júlio, among others.
As a counterpart of this exhibition, Museo Reina Sofía is also organizing a series of roundtables titled Pessoa: A Brief History of Modern Art, split into three sessions to examine the major Pessoan contributions, and their possible interpretations, to the present and to an alternative history of modern art. The first session, entitled Different Isms. Pessoa and the Avant-Garde, centres on the poet’s ambivalence towards the prevailing art movements of the time. The second session, Be Plural Like the Universe. Pessoa and Heteronyms, spotlights the practice of heteronyms — which number over one hundred — in the writer’s work. The final session, A Book Like the World, touches on the modern idea of art as the creation of a radically new and diverse experience.
More information on the exhibition can be found here. More information on the encounters and their participants can be found here.