João de Almeida

On first impression, everything in these drawings is familiar to us. We recognise the depicted places and objects, as well as light, space and time. But the more we look at them, the more everything becomes unreal and phantasmal.
For me, the world of these drawings is a world of concealment and occultation. Not in the sense that the artist is avoiding what he has depicted and seen, but in the sense that figures and visions intermingle, making it impossible to say what is real, more than real or less than real. Is everything magical or has everything become magical through the way it was depicted, framed, staged? In these black and white pastel drawings, the abolition of colour is not due to the materials used (João de Almeida could have used coloured pastels), but rather to the fact that resorting to colour would heighten their realism or unrealism. And these magnificent drawings, while having nothing to do with realism, have also nothing to do with its lack. They are drawings of the opposite, in which we are not sure of anything, except vision.

João Bénard da Costa, Director of Portuguese Film Archive - Film Museum

português