In a country where opportunities to view contemporary Portuguese art in a museum setting are scarce, the opportunity presented by this extensive collection, exhibited to the public for the first time, is truly exceptional. Maria da Graça Carmona e Costa brought these works together within the scope of the Foundation she established and ran alongside her husband Vítor Carmona e Costa, and what is now on display embodies the utopia of the museum the country has long been missing.

Reflecting a personal taste that is always open to change and a manifestation of the dense network of the collector’s friendships and personal connections, these artworks offer a comprehensive view of established contemporary Portuguese creation whilst remaining attentive to new, emerging proposals.

Of all the known private and public collections of comparable scale, this is undoubtedly one of the most extensive and wide-ranging in terms of its taste, often eschewing the dominant canons of each of the different periods it was built in. The collection is intricately linked to the intense patronage activities, the exhibition programmes, and the parallel initiatives promoted by Maria da Graça, creating a seamless fusion and mirroring effect not only between the artworks gathered and the foundation’s activities, but also between these and the life and tastes of its mentor.

The collection’s specific features include not only its vastness and the diversity of its artworks but also the numerous instances where we can trace the careers of certain artists over time—a rare opportunity within the scope of national collections. It also prominently showcases drawing as a key discipline in many of the works acquired. Moreover, the collection is complemented by an extensive parallel publishing programme, including the production or sponsorship of over two hundred catalogues and art books.

The Carmona e Costa Foundation Collection has been and continues to be assembled not as an investment but as a means for recognising and distributing value. With her analytical tools, accumulated through decades of observation, monitoring, and intervention on the national creative scene, Maria da Graça has been creating her personal puzzle. She did so without any historicist intent, without the ambition of exhausting reality, guided only by her pleasure, immense intuition, and love for art and artists. Over these decades, she has put together a true family album where each image bears witness to a personal relationship and a memory. More than simply being able to be traced or illustrated through the collection, a part of the history of contemporary Portuguese art is revealed in the collection itself, where many of the works are factual elements of that history.

In this exhibition, by following the multiple threads woven through the collection and the times of artistic creation, we have sought to understand the reality and expression of a wish.

Manuel Costa Cabral and João Pinharanda

The recent survey of the Collection’s vaults has unveiled a group of works that could easily be presented on its own, while also being sufficiently ample to justify a new chapter in the series of exhibitions that make up Family Album*. The set in question is a significant group of “artist’s books”, works that demand specific modes of presentation and enjoyment, and wall pieces of a similar nature in terms of creative practice. This led to the present exhibition, which interrupts the chronological sequence of the other three to remind us of the book’s important role in the diffusion of art, not only in its mass-printed form, but also while taking on the status of a work of art, in the exclusive or limited-run form of the pieces we showcase here

*Between October 2023 and March 2024, a single exhibition will be on view at MAAT Central, with two successive exhibitions being held at the Carmona e Costa Foundation, from October 2023 to January 2024 and from January to March 2024.

At Appleton one exhibition from 7th December 2023 to 7th  January 2024.

Visitors who wish to gain a comprehensive understanding of the collection should thus visit all four stages – none of them exhausts or summarises the collection, and none of them fully encompasses the diversity of the works and artists it comprises.

Manuel Costa Cabral and João Pinharanda