Exhibition opening: "Helena Almeida. Habitar a obra"

On 10 October, the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and the Serralves Foundation will inaugurate the exhibition ‘Helena Almeida. Habitar a obra’ at the Fundação Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery, at the UCP headquarters in Lisbon.

This exhibition brings together a collection of works by the artist belonging to the Serralves Collection and important collections on deposit at the Foundation, allowing visitors to recognise central aspects and distinct moments in her unique artistic career.

This exhibition, curated by Marta Moreira de Almeida, is part of the Serralves Collection's Travelling Exhibition Programme, which aims to make the Foundation's collection accessible to diverse audiences from all regions of the country and is organised under the collaboration protocol between the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and the Serralves Foundation.

The exhibition will be open until 11 January 2026.

About the artist:

Since the 1960s, Helena Almeida (Lisbon, 1934–2018) produced a unique body of work characterised by a marked interest in the body, its central place—which registers, occupies, and defines space—and its performative encounter with the world. The artist's first abstract canvases critically addressed the limits of pictorial space and the literal conditions of painting. In the 1970s, this interest extended to photography, where the artist's unmistakable studio and her body, fragmented or partially obscured, became recurring presences. The identification between body and work is one of the fundamental hallmarks of Helena Almeida's work, through which she questions traditional disciplines such as painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography as mechanisms for presenting and representing reality.