Serigraphy depicting the painting “Personal Instruction” (1969), an exclusive edition by the Serralves Foundation, launched on the occasion of the exhibition in the retrospective “Álvaro Lapa: No tempo todo”, presented at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art from February to May 2018 .

In works such as “Personal Instruction” (1969) Álvaro Lapa shows all his power as a writer. He makes it clear that he is troubled by time and and by the essence of humanity, without him ever being certain about the origin of everything. 

The exhibition "Álvaro Lapa: No tempo todo" was the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work ever held. Held in Serralves, the exhibition brought together works from important museums and institutional and private collections, including collections belonging to artists, architects and writers that also defined the artistic and intellectual landscape in Portugal in the second half of the 20th century.

Álvaro Lapa (Évora, 1939 — Porto, 2006) is a self-taught artist and writer, with an academic background through philosophy, in which he is a professor of Aesthetics at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto who, from 1976 and for more of two decades has left an indelible mark on consecutive generations of artists.