In a statement, the foundation led by Ana Pinho said that "the Julião Sarmento Archive contains a substantial part of the history of contemporary Portuguese art, since the 1970s of the 20th century. It brings together texts, videos, audios, images - an important audiovisual collection of international relevance, resulting from years of artistic and laboratory activity in the area of plastic arts - artefacts, interviews, newspaper articles, reviews and correspondence exchanged with other benchmark artists of his time."

"This important donation will allow the Serralves Museum to expand the possibilities of research, dissemination and presentation of one of the most important art archives in our country", added, in the same text, the foundation that plans to launch a publication about the archive, the organization of an exhibition, talks and conferences.

Sarmento, who was born in Lisbon in 1948 and died in 2021, in the same city, was one of the most international Portuguese artists, having represented Portugal at the Venice Art Biennale in 1997 and having been the subject of an exhibition by Tate Modern, in London, in 2011.

In 2012, the Serralves Museum organized the most complete retrospective of his work, a work that also deserved recognition with the award of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Prize.

While the artist's archive goes to Serralves, his private art collection will remain in the so-called Pavilhão Azul, in Lisbon, in a concession made through a protocol signed in February this year between the Julião Sarmento Collection Association and the municipal company EGEAC, with a duration of 10 years.

"The Julião Sarmento Archive has great artistic and scientific value, representative of the collective memory of a country and its culture, [and] will acquire a new life, allowing renewed readings of its documents. It will allow us to know and investigate in depth an uninterrupted cycle of activity, fundamental for Portuguese art in Portugal and in the world, which includes documents related to Julião Sarmento's creations, to the creations of the artists he associated with and to laboratory and experimental projects that he developed over five decades", added the Serralves Foundation.

The foundation noted, in the same text, that the donation of Julião Sarmento's archive is "revealing of the current potential for fixing in Serralves of new artistic estates of international impact and of the investment that the Foundation makes in order to strengthen its Collection through new acquisitions and the reception of new important art collections and artistic estates, by donations and deposits".

With the inauguration of a new wing of the museum, also designed by the architect Álvaro Siza, like the main building, the institution emphasizes having additional space to exhibit "permanently, its collection and archives", which already include the RE.AL Atelier Archives by João Fiadeiro, the Alternativa Zero Archive, the Álvaro Siza Archive, the Álvaro Siza/Carlos Castanheira Archive and the Manoel de Oliveira Archive.

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