The cooperation protocol for the exhibitions was signed today, in Lisbon, at the headquarters of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, by the Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, and the president of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Isabel Mota, in the presence of deputies, artists and ambassadors.

The exhibition of Portuguese women artists will take place on the occasion of the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union, and will be presented at the Bozar arts centre, in Brussels, in the first half of 2021, and will continue, in the second half, to the Olivier Debré Contemporary Creation Centre, in the French city of Tours, as part of the "Portugal-France Crusade Season".

Isabel Mota said she is in tune" with the promotion, both of Portuguese culture and art at an international level, and gender parity.

She pointed out that the project - which will be commissioned by art historian and curator Helena de Freitas - will show "a willingness to recognize that there is a space for creation, which belongs to these artists, which has not always had the recognition it deserved".

Portuguese artists "constitute a unique case of international scope, particularly in the confrontation with the career of male artists of the same generation, in the second half of the 20th century", she added.

"This project also serves to try to understand the reasons why a surprising number of female artists have succeeded internationally, when the social, political and economic context did not generally favour such visibility of Portuguese artistic creation”.

The exhibition is entitled "Women Artists in Portugal - From 1900 to the present day", and will bring together leading Portuguese artists such as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Lourdes Castro, Paula Rego, Ana Vieira, Maria Lamas, Graça Morais, Salette Tavares, Helena Almeida, Joana Vasconcelos, Maria José Oliveira, Ana Jotta and Leonor Antunes, among several others.

The exhibition will be based on the works chosen by these artists, "paying particular attention to more reserved and even unpublished aspects of some of them".