"Grand Herbier D'Ombres", artwork by Lourdes Castro (winner of the 2000 EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize), included in the exhibition An Oasis at Sunset, held at maat in 2020.
“We have always targeted artists whose image was less well-known than the density and the depth of their work warranted,” explains João Pinharanda. And he stresses that these are “significant artists, if at times controversial, who are absent from the media and are not known by the general public”. This is how the art consultant and critic, and current director of the Camões Institute’s Portuguese Cultural Centre, in Paris, describes the relevance of the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize, now celebrating its 21st anniversary. João Pinharanda was one of the mentors of this initiative, and was one of the members of the jury in the first seven editions.
“Our main goal was to make known, rather than to reaffirm those [artists] who are already known. In that regard, I believe that that goal has been fully and consistently achieved. The only area where we might have been remiss was in increasing the number of female artists contemplated by the award,” he states. The idea for the Art Grand Prize came from the invitation he received in 2000 from the then-president of the EDP Foundation, Mário Cristina de Sousa, to create an award for painting. “There was consensus that in addition to that award, the national context was missing others, including a more global award, not limited to the short term, but instead dedicated to [an artist’s] long-term body of work, as well as a certain need to reveal that body of work to a public who was not familiar with it,” explains João Pinharanda.
In 2000, the first edition of the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize contemplated Lourdes de Castro, “an incontrovertible name from the gallery of Portuguese artists from the second half of the 20th century”, as the jury described at the time. She was followed by Mário Cesariny (2002), Álvaro Lapa (2004), Eduardo Batarda (2007), Jorge Molder (2010), Ana Jotta (2013) and Artur Barrio (2016). And now, Luisa Cunha (2021).
According to Jorge Molder, the Art Grand Prize “cannot be separated” from another EDP Foundation initiative, the New Artists Award – in fact, they were created in the same year. As the photographer and former director of the Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation notes, the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize represents the “recognition of the value ascribed to a body of work, it is like a recognition and appreciation machine”.
Would it be appropriate to say that the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize is the cherry on top of the cake, when it comes to an artist’s body of work? Jorge Molder takes this image and quips: “It is a cherry, but it is not placed on top, it hovers over the body of work, it encourages the artist to work harder. It is not one of those awards issued almost posthumously, at the dusk of the artist’s life. We might say that the award is dynamic and very important, because it encourages the creator to go on.”
Today, this award is considered one of the most important in the field of visual arts in Portugal. It began in the same year as the EDP Foundation started its contemporary art collection. The EDP Foundation Art Collection now includes around 2 450 works by over 295 Portuguese artists, and these are often included in exhibitions held at maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, which also belongs to the EDP Foundation. In other words, Jorge Molder reflects, referring to all of these attributes, we are talking about “a consistent policy, a museum structure and two crucial awards, one of recognition and another which serves as an incentive”.
As far as João Pinharanda can recall, the members of the jury have always been unanimous in their choices, “although this has not precluded more or less long-held discussions, which are always very productive and enlightening, and which serve to support the final choice”, he reveals. “The exhibitions and the catalogues we have presented to complement each award have always confirmed the choice made for each edition”, the critic and curator underlines. When asked about a possible coherent line linking all the artists who have received the award so far, however, he is less categorical: “The way in which Portuguese artistic production is developed, the high level of individuality present in each artist’s language, only allows us to establish artificial lines of articulation between each individual authorship. There is a radical heteronym quality to Portuguese creative reality that enriches the overall panorama, while making it difficult to engage in any sort of synthetic effort.” Bruno Horta
