Jaime Fernandes

About

Exhibition of drawings by Jaime Fernandes (1899–1969), an artist who began drawing at age 66, four years before his death, and who is one of the most significant figures in Portuguese art of the twentieth century. He was born in the village of Barco, in Covilhã, and was admitted at age 38 to Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lisbon, where he spent the rest of his life. The drawings emerge from a dense web of lines, made mainly with colored ballpoint pens. They are inhabited by ancestral figures, imaginary animals, and human and anthropomorphic presences. The exhibition stems from the 2021 solo show at Centro de Arte Oliva, which revealed a body of work dispersed across collections in Portugal and Europe. Twenty-three drawings were subsequently placed on deposit at the Centro and are presented alternately, which is why the selection on display changes over time. It is a good gateway into Portuguese art brut.