Deviation as structure: four decades of painting by Pedro Casqueiro

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DATE

10 Mar 2026

AUTHOR

Maria Inês Augusto

Deviation as structure: four decades of painting by Pedro Casqueiro

AUTHOR

Maria Inês Augusto

The exhibition Detour, presented at MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, offers a comprehensive reading of approximately four decades of Pedro Casqueiro's work.

It is important to know from the outset that this is not merely a retrospective exhibition, nor does it present a linear or evolutionary narrative—the proposal clearly transcends this framework. Curated by João Pinharanda, the exhibition deliberately embraces gaps and discontinuities, reflecting the artist's own internal logic and the way his work is structured through successive reconfigurations. In this sense, the exhibition is configured as a field of constantly articulating relationships, where tensions—and, at times, unexpected convergences—remain active, revealing the complexity and vitality of his work. In the exhibition leaflet, the curator notes that Pedro Casqueiro belongs to the generation that emerged in the context of the so-called "return to painting" of the 1980s, sharing with this moment the reaffirmation of the pictorial medium as the central territory of artistic practice. The artist distinguishes himself, however, by rejecting historicist frameworks and narrative tendencies that marked a significant part of the production of his contemporaries, affirming a freer, more subjective, and experimental relationship with painting.

Over the years, his practice has solidified as unique and autonomous. Detached from pre-defined stylistic or discursive agendas, it is sustained by a coherent path within its own heterogeneity. In fact, throughout the exhibition, and seeing the works in dialogue, it becomes clear that, in his artistic trajectory, the artist did not seek to construct a path of progressive formal refinement, nor was he interested in consolidating a stable, easily identifiable style. On the contrary, he insisted on a practice of continuous displacement—formal, conceptual, and affective. As if discontinuity paradoxically became his constant. The exhibition's title—Deviation, in its translation—condenses this attitude. Each work introduces an internal imbalance: balance and instability coexist; the word infiltrates the image or takes on its own form; the gesture, seemingly spontaneous, reveals an underlying construction and methodology. Meaning is suggested and immediately displaced. There is always an element that interrupts direct reading and prevents the fixation of a single meaning.

As we explore the works from the early decades, we encounter dense, restless, unstable, and vibrant surfaces. Pictorial fields of material and chromatic exuberance—Untitled (1984), Untitled (1985), Untitled (1987)—that contrast with the production of subsequent years. The material density gives way to more refined surfaces, to a spatial organization that often explores the tension between illusory depth and two-dimensional affirmation. This progressive transformation triggers a more evident, sometimes figurative, graphic inclination, without implying any abandonment of the subjective matrix that structures his work. However, throughout the exhibition, we feel that the significant formal mutation does not signify rupture, but redefinition. Observing the whole, one perceives a persistent echo of themes, variations in language, and structural recurrences. Works from different periods dialogue with each other, revealing different correspondences. The apparent fragmentation of the exhibition's path—and of the artistic production itself—dissolves as we move through the various rooms. Forms reappear metamorphosed, chromatic ranges traverse decades, compositional structures are twisted, multiplied, inverted. It is freedom assumed as a principle; it is the refusal of pre-established limits to artistic practice; it is painting as a territory of unrestricted experimentation, capable of absorbing, recombining, exploring references, records (Patty, 2025), architecture (Galeria, 1997), urban iconography. Nothing is excluded from the beginning.

There is also a constant interplay between figuration and non-figuration, between gestural expansion and structural restraint. Linguistic fragments, hybrid phrases, and forms operate as devices that sometimes evoke abstract assemblages; at other times, they approach pop art or the visual codes of industrial culture. There seems to be a constant oscillation between rigorous control and openness to spontaneity, to challenge. What at first appears to be free of rules ultimately reveals its own internal logic, which structures and sustains the production.

There is an obvious compositional rigor, but also an underlying melancholy. Despite the chromatic vitality that permeates many of the works, Casqueiro acknowledges the presence of a darker subtext. Beneath the sometimes almost festive appearance of the canvases, a kind of displeasure, discomfort—perhaps even despair—in the face of the contemporary world insinuates itself. His painting carries a keen awareness of the present time—and perhaps also of what remains in it from the past—marked by saturation and disenchantment. Perhaps this ambivalence—between celebration and unease, between freedom and discipline, between permeability and structure—arises from the need to resist identity fixation, the predictable, the obvious, and boredom.

Detour, more than presenting a collection of works that illustrates the artist's trajectory, exposes a process in progress. It demands energy and openness to an interpretation of what insists on eluding us. It is a continuous exercise in deciphering—different atmospheres, different moods, different worlds.

The exhibition can be visited at MAAT Central until April 6, 2026.

BIOGRAPHY

Maria Inês Augusto, 34, has a degree in Art History. She worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in the Educational Services department as a trainee and for 9 years at the Palácio do Correio Velho as an appraiser and cataloguer of works of art and collecting. She took part in the Postgraduate Programme in Art Markets at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa as a guest lecturer for several editions and collaborated with BoCA - Bienal de Artes Contemporâneas in 2023. She is currently working on an Art Advisory and curatorial project, collaborating with Teatro do Vestido in production assistance and has been producing different types of text.

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