Jorge Silva - M. Lapa - Ilustração

The metaphorical value of this historical coincidence points to a still-hidden body of work by Manuel Lapa, requiring research and compilation, which this exhibition and catalog accomplish with undeniable merit. Not that Manuel Lapa is an obscure name for those who have already approached the history of Portuguese illustration and graphic design in the second half of the 20th century. On the contrary, his authorship is recognized and valued by readers of photobooks as art director of Mundo Português, Imagens de uma exposição histórica 1940, by film enthusiasts as the author of the costumes for Amor de Perdição (1942) by António Lopes Ribeiro, by researchers in the field of tapestry as the author of designs for some magnificent tapestries from the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, or even by a profile of historians, in which I include myself, particularly attentive to Portuguese periodicals, as the graphic designer of some magnificent magazines, from Atlântico to Prelo, including Mundo Português and Diana. It was necessary to develop, regarding this vast, diverse and scattered body of work, an effort to systematize it and to carry out a justified critical reading of it.

Lapa is one of the greatest exponents of the generation of artist-decorators born in the 1910s and who established themselves in the 1940s, which includes names such as Maria Keil, José Espinho or Frederico George, and whose work would be laudatorily presented to the public in the exhibition The Arts in the Service of the Nation held at the Museum of Popular Art in 1966. (…)