388 works by 74 Portuguese artists, a total of 1067 art pieces. It’s a legacy gathered by visual artist Pedro Cabrita Reis since the mid-1990s, now acquired by EDP Foundation to complement its Art Collection, thus benefitting from one of the most important Portuguese contemporary art archives of the 1990s and 2000s.
The 225 artists already represented in EDP Foundation’s Art Collection, which includes over 1000 works, are now joined by another 35 names, such as Augusto Alves da Silva, João Louro, Hugo Canoilas, Jorge Nesbitt and Manuel João Vieira, among others.
The EDP Foundation Art Collection, started in 2000, begins chronologically in 1960, presenting works which are historically-relevant in Portuguese contemporary art by artists such as Ana Vieira, Lourdes de Castro, Noronha da Costa, Ângelo de Sousa, Jorge Pinheiro, Jorge Martins, among others. Over the last few years, the Collection has been expanded and enriched by works by younger artists, including those shortlisted and winners of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award.
The acquisition of the Pedro Cabrita Reis collection comes at a time when EDP Foundation is preparing to unveil its own Art Collection, within the new MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology programme. From June 2016, there will be regular temporary exhibitions under specific themes in the collection which will include both historical pieces and more recent acquisitions. One of these themed exhibitions will focus on the Cabrita Reis Collection.
This 1.5-million-euro investment “in in line with our ambition to turn the future museum into an ever more interesting epicentre for national creation”, emphasises Miguel Coutinho, EDP Foundation’s general director.
