Almada Negreiros and the Panels

Almada Negreiros (1893-1970) was one of the leading figures of Portuguese modernism. He dedicated his life to drawing, painting, literature, theater, and, over the years, to discovering a universal foundation for artistic creation. Geometry provided him with a tool for studying the artistic manifestations of the past and, at the same time, served as an inspiration for his own work.

Over the decades, Almada developed a proposal for bringing together multiple paintings from this museum, imagining them in a single altarpiece, which included Nuno Gonçalves’ Panels of St. Vincent. Based on geometric assumptions, he determined the positioning of the works, suggesting that they had been originally meant to be displayed in the Chapel of the Founder, in Batalha Monastery. This investigation resulted in a unique production, blurring the lines between research and artistic creation.

Some of his works were recently studied by mathematics and fine arts researchers who wanted to understand the geometrical patterns in question, which made it possible to restore the never-before-seen work ‘Estudo em fio dos painéis de São Vicente ‘ (1950) for this occasion. The room also displays ‘Os quinze painéis na Capela do Fundador’ (1960), a work that had never been presented in its complete form, as well as two previously unseen drawings that show how Almada Negreiros paved his own path to abstraction based on a painting from the Ecce Homo Museum.

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