In its long standing, Sobral Centeno’s artistic oeuvre, spread throughout several series (and subseries) which may locate it in time, suggest, within a framework of allusions and coherences, as a supposed closure, an approach to the lived experiences and references of several latitudes and geographies and causes.  The “cause” for this current exhibition, “The Douro before you”, is the urge for a hymn, an homage to the Douro people, its places of recollection, the childhood years of the Artist himself.  Action painting has always been key in Centeno’s works, a valuation of expression (of inner feeling) that a usually narrow palette made visible.  But now, the emphasis on black, its gradations or dilutions (watery dilutions) underlines a vision of a harsher Douro (necessarily closer to that of Miguel Torga), containing a deep river, its dark banks (of so few joys), the mountains, the sails and the boats (their shipwrecks) and, further away, small chapels and crosses (of redemption and death)… In this frame of mind, the approach to colour, the expressive brushstrokes, establish nexuses or are a likely reference to Hartung and Yves Klein, in their scholarly citations and almost impure gesturing.  Moreover, the scale of some works, their endless horizontal layout, endows this exhibition with the idea of panorama, a distinct way of viewing and re-viewing.  Yet another victorious crusade for Centeno?…

António Cardoso

Prof. Emeritus of FLUP Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum Director