Line and Colour

Application of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in partnership with FCo. – fullservice company in multimedia, allowing easy access to contents and information about the exhibition: LINE AND COLOUR. DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS OF THE CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN COLLECTION.
Between June 27th and September 21st of 2014, this exhibition features a small but important series of drawings and watercolours acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian that are shown to the public as a whole for the first time, revealing the nature of the collector’s relationship with the graphic arts. Usually kept in storage for conservation reasons, these works have appeared individually in exhibitions where their iconographic significance was framed within the general terms of the theme proposed.
The route of the exhibition, which journeys from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, allows visitors to derive aesthetic pleasure from contemplating works by Dürer, Watteau, Ruisdael, Boucher, Fragonard, Guardi, Turner, Millet and Jouve, among many others. All of the featured artists made use of lines and colours to create works which, in both geographical and chronological terms, constitute landmarks in the history of the art of drawing.
This exhibition also allows multiple dialogues to be established which, in the intimacy of the personal approach, will shed light on the complex facets of the artistic methodology employed in the practice of drawing and the watercolour: in the former, we see the spontaneous expression of a ‘first thought’, the unfinished but clarifying composition, the visible ‘hesitation’ in the choice of other possible paths, the preparatory study for future works, and the finished autonomous work with its own artistic qualities; and in the watercolour, the spontaneity, immediacy and transparency that the fluidity of the medium demands and also allows.
© Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation