Between 1981 and 1983, Teresa Couto Pinto photographed António Variações as few had the opportunity to do: behind the scenes of his career and in the intimacy of his home. The exhibition Meu Nome António – Photography by Teresa Couto Pinto 1981-1983, originally presented at MUDE – Museu do Design, in Lisbon, brings together 85 of these photographs.

These photographs, some never previously shown, were selected from Teresa Couto Pinto’s photographic archive by MUDE’s director, Bárbara Coutinho. Beyond reaffirming the undeniable legacy of António Variações, they also reveal the photographer’s decisive contribution to the construction of his image.

Teresa Couto Pinto was Variações’ agent and photographer in the 1980s, but also his friend and confidante. She witnessed his creative process up close – the making of his albums and his artistic persona – at a time when his musical and aesthetic vision, groundbreaking for the standards of the era, was beginning to establish him as a defining voice in the Portuguese cultural landscape. She also had access to the man behind the myth, whom she photographed with sincerity and tenderness in moments of ease.

The exhibition is a unique opportunity to bring audiences closer to an unmissable figure in twentieth-century Portuguese culture, through photographs that build a profound and moving portrait of the author of some of the best-known verses in the Portuguese songbook.

Meu Nome é António is a co-production between Terra Esplêndida and MUDE – Museu do Design.

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