Echoes from the Collection – The Anarchist Banker by Mário Botas

Zakończona7 lipca 2026 – 18 października 20265 €

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A work from the house's art collection leaves storage: Mário Botas's O Banqueiro Anarquista, after Pessoa's story, presented by curator Susana Pomba.

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The banker leans on an umbrella and a velvet-topped chair, a newspaper under one arm and a hand in his pocket, while something like a horse breaks out through his trousers. Mário Botas drew him in 1982, in watercolour and Indian ink, after Fernando Pessoa's 1922 story of a banker who explains at length how he can also be an anarchist.

This is one work from the house's own collection, brought out of storage with an English leaflet by curator Susana Pomba. You stand close and look for what she points out: a line down the banker's nose that splits his face, the same line Botas once drew down his own face in a photograph. If you own the Relógio d'Água paperback, you've met him already: this is its cover drawing, minus the barcode.

It is a single drawing on the house tour, included in the €5 ticket, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 18:00, until 18 October.

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The horse in the trousers
Look for the horse-like creature that seems to sprout from between the banker's legs and break through the fabric of his trousers, one of Botas's recurring part-human, part-animal touches.
The split face
Look at the bald, ruddy head with crooked eyes: a line runs down the nose and divides the face in two, as Botas did to his own face with an ink line in a portrait photograph.
What the banker carries
Look for the umbrella and velvet-topped chair holding him up, the newspaper under his arm, the hand in his pocket, a house, and green and red strips the curator reads as possibly the Portuguese flag.