Lusofolia. A Beleza Insensata [Luso-folly: the senseless beauty]
21 march — 19 may 2019
Curator: Antonio Saint Silvestre
Production: Centro de Arte Oliva; Museu Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva

The exhibition Lusofolia. A Beleza Insensata, curated by António Saint Silvestre, features artworks by Lusophone artists from the Treger/Saint Silvestre Collection in the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Museum.

In the introductory text to the exhibition, Antonio Saint Silvestre, explains that the concept of Art Brut, established by French artist Jean Dubuffet in 1945, evolved and spread. The British Roger Cardinal christened the movement as ‘outsider art’, an expression from the Anglo-Saxon world that encompasses all the spontaneous and marginal arts movements, such as Folk Art, Naïve Art, Singular Art New Invention, Spiritualist Art and, of course, Art Brut. Collectors Richard Treger and António Saint Silvestre accepted Jean Dubuffet’s idea and, above all, those of gallerist and lecturer Christian Berst, who places Art Brut and Spiritualist Art in the same category, but they disagree with the notion that Art Brut creators are ‘cultural virgins’. For the collectors, anyone, isolated as they may be, has leafed through a magazine, seen an ad, a book cover and, inevitably, imbibed signs of the surrounded world. In order to demonstrate it, they mention one of Jean Dubuffet’s discoveries: Swiss ‘artist’ Aloïse Corbaz, a teacher in the court of Emperor Wilhelm II and one of the most renowned ‘Brut’ artists. In the words of the curator, Art Brut is the last artistic discovery of the 21st century, although it is not yet popular in Portugal. Except for Jaime Fernandes, Portuguese creators of Art Brut still inhabit a terra incognita, which is why Antonio Saint Silvestre decided to bring together twenty art brut artists from the Lusophone world, such as Portugal, Angola and Brazil, shown together here for the first time.