A entrevista com o artista e a conservação de grandes formatos sobre papel

: abordagens multidisciplinares na conservação e restauro da pintura contemporânea ‘Thais’, de Pedro Proença

Abstract

Contemporary works of art offer conservation-restoration professionals challenges that range from artistic poetics to their materiality, which involves technique, materials, dimensions, among other characteristics. These challenges were present in this work, with the carrying out of an intervention of conservation-restoration of the contemporary painting “Thais”, by Pedro Proença, carried out in 1984. The issues that arose related to the large dimension, 199x275cm, and lack of documentation, making it difficult to identify the materials and previous interventions, evident through existing pathologies, such as tears, stains on the sides and chromatic and gloss alterations that altered the reading of the work. With the aim of returning the painting to its original plasticity and defining the correct intervention strategy, a crossing path was traced between research and the process of contemporary art documentation, the interview with the artist, the decision-making model and identification of materials and definition and implementation of the necessary treatments. The treatments performed consisted of correcting support deformations, consolidating tears, most of which had already been intervened, and removing and correcting chromatic reintegrations with color and gloss mismatches. Considering that many problems that surround works of art in the “Thais” molds come from issues related to their dimensions, measures for their conservation and possible future interventions were also proposed in this work.

Date of Award	17 Feb 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Joana Teixeira (Supervisor) & Adriana Batista Ferreira Santos (Co-Supervisor)