Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is pleased to open its Lisbon office with the exhibition Mundo Vasto Mundo [Universe, Vast Universe*], presenting a selection of works by its represented artists. Based in a charming pombaline building in the heart of Chiado, at the same address where the General Consulate of Brazil in Portugal once operated. Maria Ana Pimenta, who is Portuguese and worked at the gallery in São Paulo for six years returns to Lisbon as International Director. The enterprise marks an organic move, allied to the excellent moment the city is living.

Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is a gallery based in Brazil, which has always acted internationally. This new base contributes to broaden the artists’ presence – be it in institutional shows, associate galleries or private collections. It is also a step towards a closer relationship to European artists, curators, collectors and colleagues.

Mundo Vasto Mundo [Universe, Vast Universe*], is a temporary exhibition which celebrates the office’s inauguration by occupying its outbuildings. The exhibition opening will happen in parallel to ARCO Lisboa. Its title invokes the close relationship between Brazilian modernist poetry and the Portuguese surrealist movement: the excerpt from the Seven-Sided Poem* (1930) by Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade, is embedded in Notícia [News], by Portuguese poet and painter Mário Cesariny in his book Pena Capital [Capital Punishment], from 1957. They regularly corresponded.

This continuous and universal dialogue is the theme of the show, which displays works by Armando Andrade Tudela, Los Carpinteros, Rodrigo Cass, Leda Catunda, Iran do Espírito Santo, Simon Evans™, Tamar Guimarães & Kasper Akhøj, Marine Hugonnier, Jac Leirner, Robert Mapplethorpe, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Rodrigo Matheus, Ernesto Neto, Damián Ortega, Sara Ramo, Mauro Restiffe, Marina Rheingantz, Julião Sarmento, Valeska Soares, Adriana Varejão and Erika Verzutti.

* Translator’s Note: Here in Elizabeth Bishop’s version to Drummond’s poem, in The Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.