Untitled, 1986 by Rosa Carvalho, is Collection Caixa Geral de Depósitos’ current highlight. The painting is on loan to Um Silabário por Reconstruir, an exhibition curated by José Maçãs de Carvalho and Joana Oliveira Borges. The show is open at Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Coimbra and Sala da Cidade, from February 22 to May 18, 2025.
Rosa Carvalho studied Painting at Escola de Belas-Artes, University of Lisbon, soon becoming part of the “return to painting” trend of the early 1980s. At a certain point in her career, she dedicated herself to skilfully reproducing the works of painters such as David, Boucher, Goya, Rembrandt and Velasquez, removing the female figures present in the original paintings. The removal of these figures, combined with the painting’s formal academic quality, appears to be a deliberate move toward anachronism and “sets the scene in such a way that characters outside the original characters seem to be willing to align their intimacy with what is being reported.” (João Miguel Fernandes Jorge). The absence of the female figure repudiates the idea of women as objects of representation, recognizing them as makers of art, i.e., as artists. Revisiting the classical painting serves as a starting point to debate the depiction of the feminine body and the role of women in a world dominated by latent masculinity, “an artist who disavows the lethargy of norms” (João Sousa Cardoso).
The painting Untitled, 1986, recreates the female figure as a model that alternates between images of religious, mythological, sublime, erotic or imaginary attributes, without ever settling on a specific one. Reality is always questioned in a painting, be it a landscape or a still life. Not because the image is not believable, quite the opposite; but because it seems to carry with it the virtues and contradictions of history. By reproducing classical and historical paintings, or at least by referencing them, the artist evokes “a world made of memory, nostalgia perhaps, melancholy certainly.” (Isabel Carlos). The female figure, perhaps Artemis, goddess of the hunt, holds an arrow. However, her gentle hands and gesture make her resemble the angel who shot Saint Teresa with an arrow. It is in the mist that the painting takes place. “Blinded by the mist that conceals the solution to these spaces, the viewer is continuously challenged to find it knowing that he will never unravel it, because it does not exist.” (João Pinharanda).
Despite her discreet artistic career, her work has not gone unnoticed by important private and public collections, including: Fundação EDP, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Fundação GALP, Fundação PLMJ, the Norlinda and José Lima Collection, FLAD, among others. Her work has recently been presented in Tudo o que eu quero – Artistas Portuguesas de 1900 a 2020 curated by Helena de Freitas and Bruno Marchand, a group exhibition that took place at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon and at the Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré in Tours in 2021 and 2022, respectively; and also in Às Escuras,her solo exhibition curated by Isabel Carlos at the Museu Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, in 2024.
Hugo Dinis