Manuel Valente Alves

In this installation, Manuel Valente Alves (Abrantes, 1953) uses photographs, drawings, and paintings, made between 1990 and 2025, to develop a poetic dialogue with Petrarch’s letter of the same name (Ascensus Montis Ventosi), written in 1336. The central themes addressed in this letter are transposed into a contemporary reflection on art, perception and the act of climbing.

The ascent of the mountain, in both works, is a metaphor for a journey of deepening – spiritual, in Petrarch’s case; artistic and reflective, in Valente Alves. The act of walking, of climbing a mountain, the movement in space, is not only a physical and spiritual act; it is also an act of resistance to the “objectification” of human experience.