Exhibition at the Museum of Neo-Realism revisits resistance movement

Uma long-term exhibition on portuguese neorealism is inaugurated on 24 October at the Neo-Realism Museum in Vila Franca de Xira, revisiting the main writers and artists of the movement that fought the dictatorship of the New State.

Titled “From Reality to the Real. Neorealism, Today”, the exhibition presents a perspective of the artistic development of neorealism, incorporating research carried out in recent years, according to a statement released by that museum of Vila Franca de Xira, in the district of Lisbon.

Curated by António Pedro Pita, David Santos and Odete Belo, the exhibition course highlights the aesthetic and ethical dimension of the movement, as well as its historical and cultural relevance as a form of artistic intervention and resistance to dictatorship.

“Neorealism” was the Portuguese designation for a profound cultural transformation that occurred mainly between the 1930s and 1960s. The profound crisis of the capitalist system (1929), the rise of the Nazifascisms, the brutality of the Spanish War and the recognition that the Russian Revolution of 1917 constituted a deepening of the French Revolution ", points the curate in a text on the exhibition.

In this period, young writers, painters, musicians and scientists sought aesthetic solutions and cultural forms appropriate to their social and political convictions, “assigning culture an important role in the process of human emancipation”, they say.

Approaching reality was a starting point for the movement, but the goal was not to reproduce what was immediately observable, but to find artistic forms capable of expressing the complexity of existence and social transformations, creating a neorealist aesthetic.

As the curators explain, the challenge was to move from reality as it is immediately learned to a broader understanding of the real, understood as “what is within the reach of our spirit and what is not yet within the reach of our spirit”.

The opening of the exhibition “From Reality to the Real. Neorealism, Today” is scheduled for 16:00 October 24, at the Neo-Realism Museum, with free entry.