Vexation of Spirit. The Duerckheim Collection x Serralves Group exhibition featuring Baselitz, Kiefer, Gormley and Gilbert & George

Vexation of Spirit. The Duerckheim Collection x Serralves is the title of the first showing at the Foundation of the contemporary art collection assembled by the collector Count Duerckheim and recently placed on deposit at Serralves. Having been assembled over four decades, this collection brings together works by some of the most important artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Antony Gormley and Gilbert & George. Considered to be one of the most significant private collections in Europe, it reflects an artistic vision marked by moral unease and historical awareness.

By focusing attention on the themes of religion, society and war, the exhibition Vexation of Spirit is intended to stimulate debate, linking contemporary artistic creation with the transformations of history and the urgency of the present.

In offering visitors a testimony that questions the course of history, the exhibition provides a unique illustration of themes relating to the evolution of beliefs, social structures and political conflicts in the contemporary history of the last 70 years, bringing together around 90 works by 34 artists and thus representing a particularly significant moment in the context of contemporary art in Portugal, above all through the inclusion of key artists who were not previously represented in the Serralves Collection.