Agenda Detail

Mário Cesariny was born in Lisbon on 9 August 1923 and died in the same city on 26 November 2006. He was a poet, painter, translator and considered one of the great Masters of Portuguese Surrealism. His poetry and visual work were a milestone for Portuguese culture of the 20^th century. He played a leading role in the Surrealist Movement for pioneering new techniques, exploring materials and imbuing humour, irony, criticism and irreverence into everything he produced.
This artist contributed to the inclusion of a large part of his collection of art and documents in the Cupertino de Miranda Foundation by means of purchase, donation and legacy. As a result of a close relationship, the institution became the owner of the contents of the artist’s home at Rua de Basílio Teles in Campolide, Lisbon. This exhibition offers a look into Mário Cesariny’s home, leading us to imagine the artist’s rooms where he lived and worked.
We will be sharing some aspects of the layout of the objects that made up the interior of his home. A set of objects positioned in no apparent order and in constant mutation: they kept rotating, they changed functions, and they refused to conform to hierarchies of values.
Photographs, artworks (mostly made by his friends), simple pieces of paper, books, painting and drawing supplies, popular and organic objects blended the profane and the sacred, the poetic and the prophetic, the national and the international. We shall also showcase his particular penchant for cats and some of the relationships he maintained with leading names in arts and literature, such as Sophia de Mello Breyner, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Paula Rego.
His work is still the most remarkable representation of Surrealism as an expression, and above all, as a ground-breaking way of seeing, understanding and living life.