Contemporary Song is the title of the exhibition dedicated to the first presentation at Serralves of the contemporary art collection created by the gallerist and collector Mário Teixeira da Silva (Porto, 1947—2023, Lisbon), recently deposited at the Foundation.

Mário Teixeira da Silva began assembling this Collection in the 1970s guided by his personal taste and reflecting his rigorous and organic way of working. The result is much more than a simple collection of artworks. Mário Teixeira da Silva also began his professional activity in the 1970s, oscillating between working as a museologist, helping organise exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Centre of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, and managing his own gallery project: Módulo — Centro Difusor de Arte. Despite the obvious overlapping of various areas of interest in the field of contemporary art, Mário Teixeira da Silva always succeeded in separating his roles as a gallerist and collector, and acquired works that wouldn’t necessarily be included in his programme for Módulo. 

Módulo — Centro Difusor de Arte was inaugurated in May 1975, in the midst of Portugal’s post-revolutionary period. It positioned itself as a space where it would be possible to combine commercial activity with a programme of culture, education and sharing. The gallery’s goal was to create a community that was more enlightened and aware of contemporary trends in the art world, both in Portugal and abroad. 

From Mário Teixeira da Silva’s perspective, a work of art should inspire the observer to reflect and research. Viewed in its most diverse aspects, this process would facilitate the construction of a comprehensive vision of the works and artists. In this context it can be assumed that the collector felt particularly close to the creative process of many of the artists represented in his collection. A paradigmatic case is Contemporary Song (1984), by Franz Erhard Walther (1939, Fulda, Germany), after which this exhibition is named.

Franz Erhard Walther’s artistic practice has always favoured the processual nature of creating a work, treating it not as a simple object or image, but as an open system of interaction with the spectator, thereby activating all the senses that are manifested through time, space, language and action. In a 1993 interview with Alexandre Melo, he remarked: ‘Ever since I began making works in the 1960s, I’ve been asking the basic question of what a work of art is. The works I produced at the time primarily served as instruments; it was the process of using the works that made it possible for the actual work to emerge. The works were an invitation for active participation. It is the spectator who, by intervening, defines the work and he cannot be consigned to the position of a mere observer.’ 2

2   Alexandre Melo, ‘Novas configurações’, in Expresso, 23 October 1993.

This selection of works from the Mário Teixeira da Silva Collection, now on display in the galleries of the Álvaro Siza Wing, aims to reflect on the action developed over five decades by Mário Teixeira da Silva. Photography was his preferred medium, but the scope of his collection is clearly multidisciplinary, expanding in parallel with other media — including painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic work. Also noteworthy was his growing interest in other areas over recent decades, such as African tribal art and 19th-century painting and modernist painting.   The presence at the entrance to the exhibition of the sculpture Chantier II [Shipyard II] (1992) by the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye (1965, Wervik) poetically reminds us, through the image of a construction site, of the circumstances in which Mário Teixeira da Silva’s collection found itself in January 2023, when the collector passed away: an insatiable curiosity, a broadening of its chronological and geographical framework and constant refinement — both by filling in gaps and consolidating the structuring presences in his Collection.  The exhibition includes around 185 works by around 109 Portuguese and foreign artists: Contemporary Song can be compared to an open musical score, where the notation is set by the viewer’s gaze.  List of artists Helena Almeida, Lewis Baltz, Pedro Barateiro, Tiago Batista, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Michael Biberstein, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Miguel Rio Branco, Bill Brandt, Elina Brotherus, Alberto Carneiro, António Carneiro, Pedro Casqueiro, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Lourdes Castro, Leda Catunda, Rui Chafes, Alan Charlton, William Christenberry, Larry Clark, Patrick Corillon, José Pedro Croft, Wim Delvoye, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, António Júlio Duarte, Dejan Dukic, Jimmie Durham, William Eggleston, João Pedro Vale+Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, Larry Fink, Pollyana Freire, Lee Friedlander, Hamish Fulton, Jochen Gerz, Ralph Gibson, Nuno Gil, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Peter Halley, José Antonio Hernández-Diez, David Hockney, Candida Höfer, Zhang Huan, Axel Hütte, Graciela Iturbide, João Jacinto, Kenneth Josephson, Ana Jotta, Justine Kurland, Fernando Lanhas, Zoe Leonard, Fernando Lemos, Sherrie Levine, Carlos Lobo, Gonçalo Mabunda, António José Martins, Ana Mata, Allan McCollum, Cildo Meireles, Brígida Mendes, Lisa Milroy, Richard Misrach, Jorge Molder, Tito Mouraz, Vik Muniz, Mário Cravo Neto, Paulo Nozolino, Gabriel Orozco, Bill Owens, Bruno Pacheco, Victor Palla, António Palolo, Jack Pierson, Jorge Pinheiro, Pedro Portugal, Jorge Queiroz, Paula Rego, Rosângela Rennó, Miguel Ângelo Rocha, Joaquim Rodrigo, Manuel Rosa, Thomas Ruff, Sérgio Santimano, Julião Sarmento, António Sena, Stephen Shore, Augusto Alves da Silva, Marta Soares, Nedko Solakov, Ângelo de Sousa, Aurélia de Souza, Manfredo de Souzanetto, Joel Sternfeld, Beat Streuli, Wolfgang Tillmans, David Tremlett, Juan Uslé, Eulalia Valldosera, Adriana Varejão, Ana Vieira, Franz Erhard Walther, James Welling, Sue Williams, Francesca Woodman, Christopher Wool, Erwin Wurm, Rémy Zaugg.