Jaime: “vi uma cadela minha com lobos” [Jaime: “i saw one of my female dogs with wolves”]
9 october 2021 — 16 april 2022
Curator: Andreia Magalhães
Jaime: “vi uma cadela minha com lobos” is an exhibition dedicated to the oeuvre of Jaime Fernandes (1899-1969); it brings together forty drawings from several private collections in Portugal, France, Switzerland and Austria as well as from national and international institutions, such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon) and Collection de l’Art Brut (Lausanne). The exhibition is the outcome of a research work launched in 2019 by Oliva Art Centre to locate Jaime’s drawings from his final years, which unequivocally made him one of the most recognized European art brut artists.
Jaime Fernandes was born in the village of Barco (Covilhã/Central Portugal) where he lived until age thirty-eight, when he was committed to Miguel Bombarda Hospital (Lisbon) where he eventually died in 1969. The artist unexpectedly started to draw after having been institutionalized for over thirty years. His drawings start as a dense web of lines, mostly made with coloured ballpens, to create a world of ancestral figures inhabited by imaginary animals and human, anthropomorphic characters. Jaime’s inner world also manifested in the form of texts, some written on the back of drawings, others consisting of letters to his wife. The title of this exhibition cites one of the random sentences that spoke of his visions, dreams and unfathomable thoughts.
The acknowledgement of Jaime’s oeuvre artistic value was posthumous, but it surprisingly overspilt the country’s borders. In 1980, seventy-four of his drawings were shown at an exhibition – the largest ever dedicated to Jaime’s work – at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; a year later, the S. Paulo Biennial exhibition Arte Incomum [Unusual art] featured fifty of his drawings. From then on, the drawings were shown across Portugal, United Sates and Europe, having been featured in various publications and exhibitions in which the value of his work has been recognized as one of the most significant in the history of European art brut. In Portugal, his oeuvre as attained to cult status; it has become known mostly thanks to António Reis’ (1931-1991) and Margarida Cordeiro’s (1938-) film Jaime (1974) rather than through contact with the drawings, which very few have actually seen.
This exhibition brings together Jaime’s drawings on which new information and knowledge have been produced. The drawings are also accompanied by documental and artistic elements, allowing for a new reading of and relationship with an oeuvre that has been far from the public for the last forty years.
The exhibition is a partnership between Centro de Arte de S. João da Madeira and Associação Alão de Morais with the support of DGARTES/Portuguese Republic.
The viewing of the exhibition is complemented by audio files which can be accessed here.
Parallel program
Artistic residence CORPO BRUTO
19th november | Performance AD LUCEM
21st november | Performance CRUA + informal gathering
Artistic residence Ninguém. Só eu
Andreia Magalhães is a collection manager, programmer and exhibition producer. In Portugal, she has worked at Museu da Faculdade de Belas Artes, Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. Magalhães also worked at the Netherlands Media Art Institute /MonteVideo, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Museum of Modern Art New York and San Francisco and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. Between 2013 and 2016, she coordinated the Museology service at Museu do Douro; she is the director of Oliva Art Centre (São João da Madeira) since 2017. She holds a doctorate degree by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and has developed a part of the doctorate programme at MoMA New York. She is an Associate Guest Lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto.
Exhibition presentation
Vídeo Paulo Cunha Martins
Exhibition views © Dinis Santos
Exhibition catalog