Third section of the Void* catalogue: Júlio Pomar & Julião Sarmento, published on the occasion of the exhibition that brought together the two artists at the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, between October 29, 2016 and March 12, 2017, this volume presents an extensive set of black-and-white photographs showing works dating from the second half of the 1960s, almost all taken in 1968 (before or after May), in the painter's studio in Paris.

The images published here, with the artist's permission, made available by the Júlio Pomar Foundation especially for this edition, reveal works in progress or left unfinished and others perhaps considered completed, but all equally destroyed. The images make it possible to show, on the one hand, the private setting of the painter’s residence and studio — installed in 1963 in Paris, at Rue Molitor, n.º 39, XVIe Arrondissement — and, on the other hand, they document a production dating from 1964. to 1968 with which Júlio Pomar then ceased to identify and which he destroyed, at a time of change in work processes and also in themes.

The abstract bent of the works that are presented here for the first time seems to accompany a saturation in the face of the series and the formal means that the painter had previously developed, in an eminently gestural «realism», with broad movements and free brushstrokes, always with direct observation of scenes and spaces. It is a period of experimentation and thematic innovations, which included the successful cycle of horse racing, Les Courses, but also a time of exhaustion and uncertainty, to which the installation in the French environment would not have been indifferent.

[Sara Antónia Matos and Alexandre Pomar]