Pessoa: Todo Arte Es una Forma de Literatura

An exhibition dedicated to Fernando Pessoa: “All Art Is a Form of Literature” takes its title from a quote by Alvaro de Campos, one of the most avant-garde heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa (Lisbon, 1888-1935), published in the influential Portuguese magazine presença. Through the prolific textual production of his more than one hundred heteronyms, Pessoa created his own avant-garde and became the exceptional interpreter of the crisis of the modern subject and its certainties, transferring to his work a multiple otherness that he attributed to his existential disorientation. Paulismo, Interseccionismo or Sensacionismo are some of the terms invented by the poet in his numerous texts and that vertebrate the specificity of the Portuguese modernity. This exhibition uses these “isms” to articulate a visual story of this Portuguese scene, bringing together a selection of works by José de Almada Negreiros, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Eduardo Viana, Sarah Afonso and Júlio, among others, related to the main ones Portuguese aesthetic currents from the beginning of the 20th century until 1935.