Pomar_Caveiras.qxp:17x21 17/01/14 12:16 Página 147
presentation Sara Antónia Matos Director of the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar
The Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar was opened on April 5th, 2013. It soon became clear that the people flocking to it largely come from either the world of the visual arts or the world of architecture. Schools, lovers of architecture, and professionals working in the field have come to this cultural institution to see not only the painter’s work but also the building that houses it. The AtelierMuseu has received visitors who have come specifically to study the space, to analyse structural questions as well as the exterior outline of the facade and the patio at the rear, to examine the system for closing the windows and other technical details that would probably escape the layman. The attention aroused by the architectural complex is not unexpected given that the conversion of the pre-existing building into a museum was planned by Álvaro Siza Vieira, a giant figure in the field whose involvement has attracted the interest of many specialists. Part of the programme of events for the 3rd Lisbon Architecture Triennale, the exhibition “Skulls, Houses, Stones and a Fig Tree”, which features works by Álvaro Siza Vieira, Fernando Lanhas, Júlio Pomar and Luís Noronha da Costa, emerges in an area of convergence between the different disciplines practised by these creators, celebrating the spirit of invention that drawing lends to those disciplines when it is distanced from technical conventions. Delfim Sardo, who has long emphasized the correlation between the visual arts and architecture, has been entrusted with curating the exhibition, which reveals the difference, the necessary distance, between those disciplines as well as the undeniable links that bind them. Although they both cultivate mechanisms for representing reality, the job of architecture is to design spaces with the effective ability to shelter the body while the visual arts can concern themselves with more intangible areas of dwelling, thereby enjoying enormous freedom. presentation
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