The Almada Murals at the Maritime Stations Interpretation Centre was inaugurated yesterday, April 7^th, at the Alcântara Maritime Station, in Lisbon, Portugal. IN2PAST is a partner through the Art History Institute (IHA, in the Portuguese acronym), the Almada Negreiros – Sarah Affonso Study and Documentation Center CEDANSA and HERCULES Laboratory. In charge of content design and scientific coordination was IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST researcher Mariana Pinto dos Santos.  

The much awaited Interpretation Centre gives new meaning to the two sets of murals modernist artist José Sobral de Almada Negreiros created in the 1940s for Lisbon’s maritime stations of Alcântara and Rocha do Conde de Óbidos, the largest set of 20^th-century mural painting in Portugal. The centre details the artwork, sets out the artistic and political context in which it was created, and tells some of the stories the walls of the maritime stations bore witness to over the years – stories of departures and arrivals, and of people passing through the Lisbon harbour, on their way to different places.

Almada’s work both at Alcântara and Rocha do Conde de Óbidos was unique in the context of artistic commissions for public works during the Portuguese dictatorship, since they dealt with topics such as emigration, poverty and the hard labour at the piers. The murals caused controversy, and the second set, at Rocha do Conde de Óbidos, was at one time in danger of being destroyed.

Completed in 1945, the eight mural panels in the Alcântara hall are divided into national mythology from popular tradition and a more realistic portrait of a riverside Lisbon. In the Rocha do Conde de Óbidos project, started in 1946 and finalised in 1949, Almada abandoned the narrative dependence displayed in Alcântara, treating the figures in a more geometric way and applying the colours in blocks, without gradations or three-dimensional illusion, ‘in a combination of cubism and graphic arts’, says art historian and curator Mariana Pinto dos Santos.