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Galeria Municipal do Porto with exhibitions by Silvestre Pestana and Mauro Cerqueira

Galeria Nuno Centeno would like to remind the exhibitions by represented artists Mauro Cerqueira and Silvestre Pestana being currently on view at the Galeria Municipal do Porto.

On the ground floor, Mauro Cerqueira joins a collective show titled Comissões #1 along Joana Escoval, Sara Graça, Catarina Miranda and Mariya Nesvyetaylo. Curated by João Laia and João Terras, this show is dedicated to support the local art scene. In this particular show, Mauro returns to his drawing practice, revealing a series of unpublished works that establish a direct link to his latest cinematic project.

Simultaneously, Galeria Municipal do Porto also hosts Colapso, a solo exhibition by Silvestre Pestana also curated by João Laia. Pestana delves once again into technological experimentation and visual poetry while making use of a dense installation of LED panels and light signals. 
The work is presented as a “force field” where language fragments and traditional discourses lose their stability – a critical warning about information saturation and the limits of progress. Silvestre uses figures such as pawns in perpetual motion to symbolise contemporary society’s inability to pause.

Comissões #1 will remain open to the public until June 14th, 2026. Meanwhile, Silvestre Pestana’s solo exhibition Colapsoremains on display on the upper floor until June 28th, 2026.

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Porto Femme 2026 at Galeria Nuno Centeno

Galeria Nuno Centeno is proud to be part of the Porto Femme 2026 program.

The 9th edition of the festival, dedicated to giving visibility to films made by women and non-binary people, focuses this year on the theme of labor and its inequalities both inside and outside the film industry. The festival will take place from April 20th to 26th across various venues and institutions in the city of Porto, such as Batalha Centro de Cinema, Casa Comum, Universidade Lusófona, Passos Manuel, Maus Hábitos, Mira Galerias and Casa das Associações.
Galeria Nuno Centeno joins this program with the special program titled Curare. This showcase features videos that place editing at the center of the creative process, exploring the visible versus the invisible and asserting cinema as a space of resistance. Curated by Luísa Sequeira, the exhibition features videos by Ana Vilela da Costa, Cristina Cavalcanti, Estefânia R. Almeida, Luísa Sequeira, Márcia Bellotti and Maria Inês Gomes.

Curare takes place on April 18th, 2026, 5:30pm at Galeria Nuno Centeno. 

Galeria Nuno Centeno
Rua da Alegria, 598
4000-037, Porto Portugal

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João Penalva presents ‘Personagens e Intérpretes’ at Culturgest

Galeria Nuno Centeno is proud to announce a new exhibition titled Personagens e Intérpretes by the gallery’s represented artist João Penalva. 
Curated by Bruno Marchand, this exhibition celebrates Penalva’s fifty-year career as a visual artist, highlighting his transition from dance to the visual arts in London. In the mid-1990s, Penalva shifted to immersive, multi-media narratives, creating complex installations that blend text, photos, and video to merge reality and fiction.
This retrospective, hosted by Culturgest and the Galerias Municipais de Lisboa, commemorates thirty years of this narrative approach with iconic works and a special film cycle.

João Penalva (b. in Lisbon, 1949) lived in London from 1976 to 2021 before returning to Lisbon. After an early career in contemporary dance he studied at the Chelsea School of Art. He represented Portugal at the 23rd Bienal de São Paulo, the 49th Venice Biennale and in the 2nd Berlin Biennale. His work has been featured in significant solo shows at prestigious institutions, including the Serralves Museum in Porto, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Camden Arts Centre in London, and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. 

The opening is set to happen April 17th 2026, 10pm at Culturgest – Fundação Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Lisbon, Portugal. Visits take place from 11am to 6pm (Tuesday to Sunday), until July 12th 2026.

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Up next at Galeria Nuno Centeno (March 2026)

Galeria Nuno Centeno will open a new series of exhibitions featuring four distinct yet complementary projects within the contemporary art scene. Titled pas de titre by Carlos Cobra, Escrita/Paisagem by Francisco Laranjo, Como olhar junto by Luiza Baldan, and Erva, Fio e Pedra by Patrícia Geraldes.
These exhibitions explore different approaches to drawing, landscape, perception, and materiality. They foster a dialogue between generations and contexts, and invite the public on a sensory journey through diverse artistic practices and languages.

Carlos Cobra’s body of work was primarily developed outside of Portugal. He (b. 1940, Alcácer do Sal) first settled in Paris in the early 1960s after a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship. Since the 1980s, painting has been at the heart of his artistic practice after years of sculpting. In pas de titre, the artist presents some of his most recent body of work. These paintings reveal a silent and persistent process, characterised by constant work on the pictorial surface, where images appear to emerge gradually from a meticulous construction process.
He participated in the Paris Biennale in 1967 and was awarded the prestigious Prix Bourdelle in 1981.

Escrita/Paisagem, titled after a 1976 work by the artist Francisco Laranjo (1955-2022), brings together works created between the 1970s and the 2020s. Beyond the different decades, the exhibition spans different scales – from a tiny piece of canvas to a five-meter drawing – and distinct techniques – oil, India ink and watercolor.
Francisco Laranjo was a Professor Emeritus at the Faculdade Belas Artes da Faculdade do Porto (FBAUP), a founder and director of the Socrates/Erasmus Programme and a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Como olhar junto is a project by Brazilian artist Luiza Baldan developed on Cova do Vapor beach, at the meeting point between the Tagus River and the Portuguese Atlantic Ocean.  Baldan hosted gatherings at the Vapor Library, a cultural community space run by locals. This process resulted in a an artist’s book (Fotô Editorial), that brings together a choral text, archival images, photographs by the artist, documentation of the activities, and a video co-directed with Patricia Black, built from two beach performances with the participation of the community.

At the The Cave Project Space, Patrícia Geraldes presents Erva, Fio e Pedra, a collection of works born from collecting and transforming raw natural materials (herbs, textiles and ceramics), exploring processes of repetition, reuse and a kind of artisanal alchemy. Through a profoundly manual and intuitive practice, the artist constructs pieces that simultaneously affirm a poetic and political stance, questioning contemporary modes of production and evoking ideas of self-sufficiency, ancestry and care – a critical reflection on nature, memory and capitalism.
Her work has already been shown at the Alberto Sampaio Museum – Guimarães, Galeria Ocupa – Porto, Portugal and at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome – Italy.

The opening is on March 21st of 2026, at 9pm, running until April 25th, 2026.

Galeria Nuno Centeno
Rua da Alegria, 598
4000-037, Porto Portugal

Sobral Centeno – Caminho Mão Ferro

Galeria Nuno Centeno is pleased to announce the first Sobral Centeno’s exhibition of 2026, titled Caminho Mão Ferro, curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez. 

The exhibition to be held at Estação das Artes, in Mirandela, consists of a collection of drawings that aim to guide a reflection on the impact of human structures, particularly the railway, on the landscapes of the Douro Valley.

Caminho Mão Ferro is an exhibition composed of several series of works spanning a chronological arc from 2016 to 2025, devoted exclusively to the Douro landscape and to the somewhat nostalgic presence of the train in the definition of a formal and conceptual framework that Sobral Centeno articulates in full resonance with a lived and recurring experience of the region.
– Miguel von Hafe Pérez

Sobral Centeno was born in Porto, Portugal, in 1948, the city where he lives and works. With a degree in Fine Arts (FBAUP), he was a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship holder (1983-1985) and a professor at the Instituto Politécnico do Porto (1987-2006). In 2024, he was awarded the Medal of Merit of the city of Porto and, in 2025, the Medal of Honor of the city of Matosinhos. He is represented by Galeria Nuno Centeno.

His work is part of several collections, notably the following: Fundação Serralves (Porto, Portugal), Center for Modern Art of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal), Coleção de Arte moderna e Contemporânea – Norlinda e José Lima (Portugal), Museu Amadeo Souza-Cardoso-Amarante (Portugal), Fundação da Bienal de Arte de Cerveira (Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal), Fundação D. Luís I (Cascais, Portugal), Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade do Porto (Portugal).

The opening is set to happen January 17th 2026, 4pm at Estação das Artes, Mirandela, Portugal. Visits take place from 9am to 6pm (Monday to Friday) and 11am 5pm (Weekends), until July 12th 2026.

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Up next at Galeria Nuno Centeno (November 2025)

Galeria Nuno Centeno is proud to announce the following exhibitions by two represented artists: Body of Water by André Sousa, and HABITACLES by Didier Fiúza Faustino.

With Body of Water, André Sousa (b. 1980, Porto) presents a linear installation of a variety of acrylic paintings that evoke non-places where the idea of a continuous and cyclical waterfall is present. The eighteen paintings suggest a sequence very similar to what can be found in primitive recordings shot on Super 8 film. The artist, based in Porto and Frankfurt, reinforces with this exhibition his ongoing search for landscapes while inserting his personal codifications.

Didier Fiúza Faustino exhibits for the first time at Galeria Nuno Centeno. HABITACLES introduces a collection of works that question the habitability of our contemporary world, at a time when society is being deprived of its right to social integrity, both physical and psychological. The Franco-Portuguese artist meditates on these dynamics through what he calls habitacles
Didier Fiúza Faustino (b. 1968, France) mixes arquitectural sensibilities in a variety of conceptual works ranging from sculptures, photographs, films and installations. His practice focuses on the relationships and tensions between body and space – its social and political constrains regarding identity.

Simultaneously, at the Video Room, The Burg of Babel 2017-2024, by the Canadian artist Mohammad Salemy is still on view. This video first premiered during the Family Film Festival – International Festival of Memory, Archive, and Ethnography in October.

The opening is on November 29th of 2025, at 9pm, running until January 10th, 2026.

Galeria Nuno Centeno
Rua da Alegria, 598
4000-037, Porto Portugal

Jorge Feijão presents ‘O Sonho de György’ at Hotel Tivoli Avenida Liberdade

Jorge Feijão, Galeria Nuno Centeno’s represented artist, shows one of his most recent works titled O Sonho de György at Hotel Tivoli Avenida Liberdade, in Lisbon, Portugal. This site-specific artwork was developed as part of Tivoli Art Collection – Make Room for Masterpieces, a programming dedicated to contemporary art, first launched in 2011 and resumed in 2022. This large-scale artwork, measuring a total of 8 by 3 meters, occupies the hotel’s lobby, where it will be featured until the end of November. 

Jorge states that the inspiration for this piece came to him after a dream, where three severe-looking entities that he later perceived as archangels were featured – ‘…each of them had a different function and was conveying a message of urgency and protection’. Initially, he aimed at creating three pieces; however, the scheduling didn’t allow him to do so.

Produced entirely with the use of charcoal and soft pastels over 352 A4 paper sheets, both new and recycled (a common technique in the artist’s process), O Sonho de György is a representation of Pietro Perugino’s Archangel Michael, a Renaissance painting, an element of the Polyptych of Certosa di Pavia. The final image aims to respond to the ‘imperative need to react to the tragic spectacle of the accelerated collapse of the planet’. 

In the original painting, Archangel Michael symbolizes a victory of good over evil, a representation used across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Feijão makes use of this aspect in hopes of conveying a turnaround for environmental anxiety, wars, and extremism proliferating across the globe at the moment.

Hotel Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Lisboa
Av. da Liberdade 185, 1269-050
Lisbon, Portugal

José Pedro Croft – Reflexos, Enclaves, Desvios

José Pedro Croft is presenting his latest solo exhibition titled Reflexos, Enclaves, Desvios in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, until the 17th of November 2025. Curated by Luiz Camillo Osorio, this exhibition, held at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, offers an immersive articulation of the different techniques of Croft’s practice in 170 artworks: drawings, engravings, sculptures and installations. 

José has been experimenting with engraving techniques since the 1990s – this exhibition has a strong selection of works with different scales and cutouts. His dedication to this craft is also confirmed by the exhibited drawings that repurpose the engraving proofs, allowing an insight into the process. 

The Galeria Nuno Centeno’s represented artist states that: 

Engraving is a work of great physical science and craftsmanship, with great rigour and dedication. It’s not secondary. For me, it anchors my work. There are things I’ve done in printmaking that will provide solutions for my sculpture work. – José Pedro Croft 

At the CCBB, it is possible to see six different sculptures, which mainly use iron, glass and mirrors – four of them are new, designed specifically for the architectural particularities of the space. These works offer a meditation about the tensions with colour, lines, overlays and instability, key elements known in Crofts’ work. 

The exhibition is running at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil from Wednesdays to Mondays (Tuesday is closed), 9am to 8pm. Even though the entrance is free, tickets still need to be held to access it. 

Tickets and further information are available here

Sobral Centeno shortlisted for the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize 2025

Galeria Nuno Centeno is proud to announce that its represented artist, Sobral Centeno, has been nominated for the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize 2025.

Conceived in 2021, this prize aims to increase exposure and stimulate the international presence of Portuguese artists and its diaspora. The proceeds from the selected works will go towards creating artistic programs to support disadvantaged children in Portugal.

As part of a list of 30 artists nominated by a group of art experts, Sobral is represented with the work Untitled, 2025.

Sobral Centeno explores the transmission of memory: within his rapid brushstrokes’ hierarchical chaos, moments of his consciousness are hidden. The confrontation with these explosive gestures in ‘Untitled’, at first impact, is almost overwhelming. Among the disorganization, chaos, and chance, hierarchy is quietly present. The expressivity of colour and the spontaneous gesture are ruled by layers – a reflection of the artist’s search for an understanding of reality. Within the abstract, the figurative can also be found; rituals, symbolic objects, and ideologies from different civilizations are concealed between the layers of acrylic. Using his art to process and share his experiences, Centeno unfolds his vision of the world, constantly transformed by political and cultural shifts.

The work will be part of the Sovereign Art Foundation exhibition, which will run from November 26th to December 13th, 2025. It is also at the inauguration that the winner of the Grand Prize will be revealed by a jury that includes Adelaide Ginga, Armando Cabral, João Paulo Queirós, Phillipe Verge, Tim Marlow, among others…

This jury selection is complemented by another result from the public – Public Vote Prize, which is now open. Galeria Nuno Centeno would like you to consider voting for Sobral Centeno.

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Silvestre Pestana – Um Artista de Contraciclos

Serralves Foundation is opening a new cycle of the exhibition Silvestre Pestana – Um Artista de Contraciclos in Gaia, Portugal. Curated by Joana Valsassina, the exhibition is part of the Programa de Exposições Itinerárias of the Serralves’ collection, a program developed to make the collection accessible across Portugal.

This exhibition documents a diverse range of the artist’s experimental work dating from the 1960s – visual poetry where linguistic and non-linguistic signs interact, avant-garde experimentations with sound and video, performances and interventions in public space and even land art. Recognised for his resistance to the Portuguese fascist regime, his work is a critique to the consumer society, wars, and new technologies aimed at social control. The commitment to these techniques and concepts are evidenced in works such as Esculturas-poemas,1969Computer Poem para ZX81 dedicado a Melo e Castro, 1981 and PO_gif_EMAS, 2019.

Silvestre Pestana – Um Artista de Contraciclos opens October 16th of 2025, 6pm at Biblioteca Pública Municipal de Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. It runs until November 30th.

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