The Occidental Calligrapher. Fernando Lemos and Japan

21 Sep 2024 – 20 Jan 2025
10:00 – 18:00  Closed on Tuesday
Location - Engawa Space
 

The exhibition is a unique opportunity to see a large collection of photographs and drawings by the Portuguese-Brazilian artist that have never been displayed in Portugal before.

Many of these photographs were taken during his time in Japan, where Fernando Lemos (Lisbon, 1926- São Paulo, 2019) first arrived on a Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship to study Japanese calligraphy and art, and bear witness to the seminal influence of Japanese culture on his artistic practice.

The relationship between the drawings and photographs on display is underlined by the dialogue with his works in other media, with works by other artists from the CAM collection, and with Japanese prints from the Gulbenkian Museum collection.

Organised around six different sections, the exhibition invites visitors to look at drawing as an act of writing and to find the artist’s projection of fantasy in the fabric of reality, in the framing and shapes photographed or drawn, and in the relationship with the human and architectural landscape.

In this project, CAM is a partner of the Moreira Salles Institute in São Paulo, which printed a set of unpublished photographs selected by the curators for this exhibition.