PORTO.- The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art presents a major exhibition devoted to the Sonnabend Collection. The exhibition constitutes the first of a two-part exhibition of the Collection presented from February through May at the Serralves Museum in Porto and the Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva in Lisbon, in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia (MUVE), Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, and the Sonnabend Collection Foundation. At a time when the Serralves Museum is devoting increasing attention to its Collection of Portuguese and international art, the Sonnabend Collection has a particular relevance. Works from its Collection formed part of the Museum’s inaugural exhibition, ‘Circa 1968’ in 1999, several of which have remained on long-term deposit at Serralves.

Created by the influential art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, the Sonnabend Collection is considered one of the most important collections of American and European art of the second half of the twentieth century, representing some of the most influential western art movements of our time. While known for her support of the prime artistic protagonists of pop art, minimalism, arte povera, post-minimalism and conceptual art, Sonnabend’s engagement continued up to her death in 2007. A reflection of Ileana Sonnabend’s support for and astute understanding of the artists with whom she worked in her galleries in Paris and New York, the exhibition reveals the remarkable clarity of her choices over more than five decades, and their lasting legacy.

At the Serralves Museum the exhibition includes 60 paintings, sculptures and installations dating from 1956 up to the present by 43 artists, the majority of whom are presented for the first time in Portugal. Many of the artists represented in the exhibition are essential references for the Serralves Collection. The installation of the Sol LeWitt wall drawing Arc from Four Corners, in the galleries of the Museum, realized with the collaboration of the Estate of Sol LeWitt, involves the participation of students from the School of Fine Arts in Porto.

The first part of the exhibition, at Serralves, is conceived in four sections. The first is devoted to American pop art and French Nouveau réalisme with paintings and sculptures by Arman, John Chamberlain, Christo, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, George Segal, Mario Schifano, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann. A second section features works associated with arte povera and anti-form by Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Guilio Paolini, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, and Gilberto Zorio. A third part focuses on minimalism with artists John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Mel Bochner, Peter Halley, Donald Judd, Clay Ketter, Sol LeWitt, John McCracken and Michelangelo Pistoletto, while the fourth section includes a floor piece by Barry Le Va and paintings by New German Expressionists Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, A. R. Penck, shown together with works by Richard Artschwager, Carroll Dunham, Robert Feintuch, Fischli & Weiss, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Rona Pondick, Robert Watts and Terry Winters.

The second part of the exhibition, at the Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, in Lisbon, is conceived in two sections. The first will focus on the role of photography in contemporary art since the 1960s, from its use in conceptual art to the work of more recent generations of artists’ use of the medium. The second section presents works by four artists of the 1980s, Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach and Meyer Vaisman, in which one sees the link with both pop and conceptual art.