May 18th is International Museum Day. To mark this date, the MNAC – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea and A Brasileira do Chiado, both icons of Lisbon’s cultural life, present the first four restored works from the café-museum’s historic contemporary art collection, from 1971, in an exhibition that will be inaugurated precisely on May 18, at 4 pm, at the MNAC. This is a unique opportunity to rediscover the vibrant lines and original colors that marked Portuguese art in the 1970s.

Among the works that shine again, great masters stand out, such as Manuel Baptista (Abstracted Still Life, 1971), Nikias Skapinakis (Portrait of Critics, 1971), Fernando de Azevedo (Tribute to Eduardo Viana, 1971) and João Hogan (Landscape of Porto Covo, 1971). These paintings, created in a period of strong artistic and political effervescence, were selected by renowned critics such as José-Augusto França, Rui Mário Gonçalves, Francisco Bronze and Fernando Pernes, and represent a milestone in the history of contemporary art in Portugal.

The paintings now restored are not just paintings. They are fragments of an era, maps of nonconformity, silent voices that still murmur the restlessness of the years that shaped our artistic identity. At a time when art was rising up against the norm, these canvases capture the essence of a Lisbon that, even in silence, never stopped moving.

The opening of the exhibition, which can be visited until the end of the year, will be accompanied by a round table that brings together representatives from A Brasileira do Chiado, MNAC and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, in a free-to-participate meeting that promises to explore the impact of visual arts on the social and cultural transformation of the city.