António Pedro "Rapto no paisagem povoada" 1947
In March we had the good fortune of going to Portugal, and spent a week drifting through museums and church ruins in Lisbon and occultic estates in Sintra. I keep meaning to post about all we saw and did and ate, but two months have gone by and here we are. The fortunate byproduct of waiting to write about a trip is that the highlights keep resurfacing in memory, and it's these which I feel compelled to share with you from time to time.
First up is this striking painting by António Pedro. I encountered it in the splendid Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, and can't stop thinking about its unsettling beauty. Pedro was one of the primary Portuguese surrealists, and his work is infused with a rubbery sort of mythology that is whimsical and disturbing at once. Who are these maidens, and why are they being abducted by aquiline monsters? What is this significance of the harlequin horse? Is the tree woman Daphne, or some other metamorphic heroine? Like the best art, it makes my mind teem with questions, and my heart relish the mystery.
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