Every month, the Abel Salazar House-Museum unveils a piece from its collection, with the aim of sharing the history of the pieces and the collection available at CMAS, highlighting themes and types of objects with high historical and scientific value that show a little more about Abel Salazar.
Self-portrait of Abel Salazar | February 2025
Self-portrait of Abel Salazar. Abel Salazar (1889-1946). 1926. Oil on canvas. UP-CMAS-000172.
In 1926, Abel Salazar painted a self-portrait that reflects his emotional and psychological condition. In the work, he depicts himself in his studio in S. Mamede de Infesta, wearing the gray serge coat he wore for both his scientific and artistic work, a garment that is still preserved today in the Abel Salazar House-Museum. His signature, in black in the bottom right-hand corner, appears on the back of the canvas he is composing, a detail present in some of his paintings.
This self-portrait was created during a particularly difficult period in his life. After more than a decade of intense and recognized scientific work in the fields of Histology and Embryology, Abel Salazar was struck by a depression that forced him to interrupt his academic activities at the University of Porto between 1926 and 1931. This withdrawal was not limited to the university, but also extended to his scientific, literary and artistic production, as well as his relationships with family and friends.
The political context also had an influence on his career. The year 1926 marked a time of great instability in Portugal, culminating in the military coup of May 28, which put an end to the First Republic and established the Military Dictatorship. In the following years, this regime paved the way for the rise of António de Oliveira Salazar, who, first as finance minister and then as head of government, consolidated the Estado Novo in 1933.
First book in the Pensamento, Arte e Ciência collection published by Casa-Museu Abel Salazar and U. Porto Press, in June 2022
Abel Salazar left for Paris on March 7, 1934. His departure was reported in periodicals such as O Primeiro de Janeiro and A Montanha and was noticed, above all, by Republican students. On his arrival in Paris, he took up residence at the Hôtel Royal Bretagne, at 11 rue de Gaîté. During his six-month “self-exile”, he made contact with French friends. He worked in Professor Champy's laboratory. He took part in conversations with personalities from the arts and sciences and came into contact for the first time with the philosophy of the Vienna Circle. He took part in anti-fascist activities. He visited museums, palaces and exhibitions, such as the Salon in 1934 and the retrospective exhibitions of Daumier's work. He strolled through woods, parks and boulevards with “that companion of all times”, the enigmatic F. de P., to whom he dedicates the work “Paris in 1934”.
Primeira edição do livro "Paris em 1934"
This book bears witness to his daily life and the things he was passionate about, even though it's not a diary. It reveals his states of mind and is an incursion into the demons that tormented him: the meaning of art and life, the crisis in Europe and the role of the intellectual in society. It was first published in 1938, reprinted in 1943 and published again in 2022 by U.Porto Press. However, before its publication, between December 1934 and September 1935, the author published articles in the press. In the magazine “Vida Contemporânea” he published 7 texts under the title “Artistic and literary life - Paris in 1934”. And after the book was published, he continued to produce texts on the subject, specifically 29 articles, between May and January 1940, in the periodical “O Trabalho”. The book is made up of 38 texts, of unequal length and apparently arranged chronologically. It opens with a chronicle about a ballet show at the Opera and closes with the chapter “Perplexity”, in which he describes the urban landscape, between luxury and misery, seen from a train.
For the first floor of the old Rialto café, designed by Artur Vieira de Andrade, Abel Salazar produced a charcoal mural entitled “Synthesis of History”. The large-scale work (5.00 m x 3.30 m), made using a technique that the artist used practically only for this work, and commissioned for the Boavista Health House (five landscapes of Gerês, at the entrance to the operating theatre), symbolizes the efforts of humanity throughout the ages.
The café opened in 1944 and closed its doors in 1972. It passed into the ownership of a bank, but retained some of its original ornamentation. The mural painting was restored at the turn of the century, then plastered over by the new company that leased the first floor of the old café, and later returned to public use. The mural was the motto for the first exhibition curated and put together by the students of the course unit “Theory and Practice of Museum Exhibitions”, taught by Elisa Noronha in the 1st year of the Museology course at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (FLUP), in collaboration with the Abel Salazar House-Museum (CMAS); it was inaugurated on May 18, during the celebrations of International Museum Day and as part of the closing of the 1st Museology Week at FLUP.
Autorretrato de Abel Salazar personificando-se como Rembrandt, pintado em 1926, ano em que o professor universitário entrou numa longa depressão que o afastou, não só da vida académica, mas também da produção científica, literária e plástica, e do convívio com familiares e amigos. Uma temporada difícil passada, maioritariamente, na Casa de Saúde de S. João de Deus (1928-1931), que o autor descreveu no livro Testamento d ‘hum Morto Vivo sepulto na Casa dos Mortos, em Barcellos.
A obra foi pintada no seguimento da participação numa reunião da Associação de Anatomistas em Liège, viagem na qual contou com a companhia da irmã Dulce e durante a qual aproveitou para visitar Paris, Bruxelas, e Amesterdão, cidade onde contemplou a obra de Rembrandt no Rijksmuseum. Ela representa o busto frontal do artista, que emerge de um fundo escuro, parcialmente iluminado por uma luz de reminiscências barrocas. O rosto tem cuidada carnação. A cabeça está coberta por uma boina de veludo verde esmeralda e no canto da boca surge um cachimbo, à moda flamenga (1ª imagem).
No verso do quadro, em posição invertida (2ª imagem), há uma outra representação figurativa, etiquetas relativas a inventários e exposições e inscrições impressas por Dulce Salazar, sua anterior proprietária.
This set of scientific illustrations (20 pictures) is part of an article by Abel Salazar (1889-1946) published in 1946 in “Acta Anatómica”, an international journal in the fields of Anatomy, Histology, Embryology and Cytology, published between 1945 and 1998. Its author, a pioneer in the use of drawing at the crossroads between the sciences and the arts, uses microscopic drawing to communicate the latest developments in one of his most revolutionary works from the beginning of his scientific career, produced at the Institute of Histology and Embryology of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto - Abel Salazar's Tanoferric Method. In this case, communicating through drawing what this method allowed us to visualize in a study of a biological tissue, connective tissue.
The curiosities and knowledge about working women in Abel Salazar's paintings in the Gramaxo Collection were discussed in a conversation on June 8, with Susana Barros, following the motto of the Piece of the Month and its mysteries.
Find out more here.