The cycle a vida, apesar dela, taking place at Centro de Artes Visuais in Coimbra, is still running at full steam with the Popalolo exhibition from June to September this year. The exhibition presents Coimbra’s audience with a revisiting of some of António Palolo’s (Évora, 1946 – 2000) most important cornerstones, made between the 60s and early 70s.

His work, which had not been featured in a retrospective since 1995 – the year it was shown at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation -, imbues the city of Coimbra with an area where time appears out of sync with the present. In an urban fabric steeped in the savour of the centuries, the CAV turns into a source of references from the second half of the twentieth century, right in the heart of Pátio da Inquisição (1542).

During a conversation I recently had with art historian Manoel Canada, he mentioned how pop art was first referred to as neo-dada: within the pop logic, saturated colours, cartoon references, portraits of iconic personalities and the flat colours that were so widely used by Americans such as Robert Rauschenberg (Texas, 1925 – 2008) and Jasper Johns (Georgia, 1930) in the 50s art scene. This style arose from techniques commonly used in Dadaism, such as collage and assemblage.

This is the premise from which the first questions emerge for those unfamiliar with António Palolo’s work: are we talking about a pop artist or a geometric abstract?

Throughout the exhibition, the visitors move between these two styles that the artist flirted with. In a fortunate decision, Miguel von Hafe Perez, the curator of Popalolo, decided to place the geometric abstract works on the backbone of the Centro de Artes Visuais building. This offers the explorers a chance to catch their breath.

Although the large proportions of the geometric abstract canvases, they do not invite their beholders to dive in. They are mechanised and alien bodies – they clearly did not come from the entrails of Coimbra but could have come from an underground station in a cosmopolitan city, or from some São Paulo concrete studio – for instance, that of Grupo Ruptura (São Paulo, 1952 – 1959).

Under these circumstances, in which the work defies and does not welcome the viewer, CAV’s generous ceiling height can handle the robust strides of Palolo’s lines.

The visitor is also comfortable with the conservatively arranged, well-aligned works – visibly assembled by an exceptionally professional team -, allowing the abstract geometry to operate in a nuclear way while the less colourful figurative works remain in their orbit.

Once the tour is at its end, visitors can also watch the film A. Palolo – Ver o Pensamento a Correr (1995, José Silva Melo), ripening all the information on display at CAV: a traditional and well-designed narrative line, starting with a rare and contextualising curatorial text, a well-balanced exhibition section and ending with a documentary video to stir the imagination about the artist’s surroundings.

Popalolo is right to be interested in introducing the Évora artist to the general audience and in this way educating young people about the foundations of painting. He offers a past filled with colours, textures and shapes that provide a good clue to potential future avenues for Portuguese canvas pigments. We are indebted – beyond the walls, whatever these may be.