The “real lack” of religious architecture in Portugal
In an article on “Contemporary Christian architecture”, published in January 1947 in the magazine Allah, wrote the architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira: “It is necessary to speak openly: in this field, the present situation of our Country offers a very sad panorama. Religious architecture suffers from the same ailment as civil architecture: lack of authenticity. Artificialism is encouraged. Concealment is protected. The cult of the empty form is held at a high price. The technician is hampered, or, when supported by the inexorable force of vital realities, he is masked. Current Portuguese architecture is divorced from the People, the Land and the Age.”
Are these observations relevant? The text is anthologized in a book that was presented in Lisbon on the afternoon of this Monday, 24th, and which brings together articles by members of the former Movement for the Renewal of Religious Art (MRAR), created 70 years ago in Portugal. In the introduction to the work, João Norton de Matos, a Jesuit priest and himself an architect, writes, about one of the reasons for giving value and importance to the texts gathered in this book: “more than 50 years after the last of the texts, they retain great actuality and urgency” and this aspect “must challenge us”. The author adds: “From the point of view of modern religious architecture, the reflection has tended to move towards the university and remains, in general, further away from the practice of architecture and cultural and diocesan life, so that high quality works are become very rare. Also from a religious point of view, the winds are different, the desire for new and better times for the life of the Church and its artistic expression in Christian communities and in the city has tended to give way to nostalgia for the past and fear of openness and change. ”
The book, published in electronic format by the National Culture Center and Brotéria magazine, is organized by João Alves da Cunha, author of MRAR – The Golden Years of Religious Architecture in Portugal in the 20th Century (Universidade Católica Editora) and architect. Among the names of members of the MRAR that are featured in it are artists and architects such as António Freitas Leal, Diogo Lino Pimentel, José Escada, Luiz Cunha, Madalena Cabral, Nuno Portas or Nuno Teotónio Pereira, priests such as Albino Cleto, António dos Reis Rodrigues, Henrique de Noronha Galvão or João de Almeida (also an architect) and Avelino Rodrigues, Flórido de Vasconcelos, José Maya Santos, Maria José de Mendonça and the writer Vitorino Nemésio.
The colloquium that marks the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the MRAR and during which the electronic book will also be presented Religious Art Renewal Movement – Texts and Articles takes place from 4pm this Monday at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, in Lisbon. The architecture of the e7 organizers says an initiative of this MARGEN “important that corresponds to the chosen group, the will of architects committed to offering a religious movement and a greater sacred art in Portugal to the opposition a greater and a quality art, in an initiative of formal religious initiative in Portugal to maintain traditionalist architectural models in new religious buildings in the urban centers of Lisbon and Porto”.
In the colloquium, participants, in a first panel, were the administrator of Gulbenkian, Guilherme’Oliveira Martins, and the architects José Manuel Fernandes, João Alves da Cunha and João Norton de Matos. In the second, Maria Calado (president of the National Culture Center) and the architects Ana Tostões, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, João Appleton and Ricardo Jacinto intervene. The session of the session will be made by the person in charge of the Renaissance and World Youth Day, the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon, Américo Aguiar.