“For this portrait, national newspapers were used with notable news from the last ten years of Portuguese political and social life. The sheets were manually superimposed and subsequently worked on by subtraction, through manual excavation, until the image emerged from the accumulated layers. The use of the newspaper, a medium associated with the circulation of information, collective memory and ephemerality, assumes a central role, transforming the material itself into an element inseparable from the meaning of the work. The portrait is not limited, therefore, to the representation of the presidential figure, but materially incorporates the historical time in which the mandate took place”, read a note sent to the newsrooms.
The work was developed over the course of around half a year in the artist’s studio, in Barreiro, “in a process that combined research, formal experimentation and successive moments of reflection and adjustment”.
“During this period, the President of the Republic and the director of the Museum of the Presidency of the Republic, Maria Antónia Matos, visited the studio, following the evolution of the work”, which is inspired by a photograph by Rui Ochoa, official photographer of the Presidency of the Republic and “an essential figure in political photojournalism in Portugal”.
“The choice of this image assumed particular relevance for the artist, due to its strong documentary and historical dimension”, indicates the studio.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa says goodbye to the Belém Palace and the Presidency of the Republic next Monday, March 9, the day of António José Seguro’s inauguration as the new head of state.
Leave a Reply