The Embassy of Portugal in London is pleased to announce Ana Palma and Cliff Andrade as the two artists selected to have their work featured as part of Paula Rego and her Contemporaries – an exhibition of Portuguese artists in the UK. The exhibition is being held in collaboration with the 12 Star Gallery to celebrate Portugal's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2021 and will see the artists, chosen by way of an open call, exhibit their work alongside prints contributed by Paula Rego herself. It is curated by Mara Alves and has the support of Camões I.P.
We are very excited to have the contribution of one of the most important figurative artists from her generation. Among the eleven prints by Paula Rego that will be on display alongside works by the selected artists is an etching entitled La Mano Muerta, published in 2020 from a plate drawn in 1962/4, which will be shown publicly for the first time.
Paula Rego and Her Contemporaries invites us to look back at the past from an evolutionary perspective as well as celebrating the creative processes in response to the challenges facing Europe in the 21st century: the digital transition and its impact on the visual arts as well on the world at large; the development of a social Europe, with a particular focus on the EU's role in the world.
Mara Alves, the exhibition's curator, commented: The project aims to promote Portuguese artists in the UK, whose works respond to the challenges that Europe faces in the 21st century. When considering its social and artistic phenomena, Portugal stands as a nation of renewed culture: authentic, powerful, and irreversibly globalised, yet with its creative roots untouched and uniquely understood by each artist involved in this show. Gifted with impressive technical and creative skills, and inspired by their thematic adversities, the artists remain rigorous within their linguistic production, willing to convey, within their imaginary universe, the expressive dimension of their current contemporaries.
