O director of the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation, António Gomes de Pinho, thanked the visit and stressed that there will be “a great exhibition” on the work of the two artists in Budapest and Lisbon (cities where Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva were born, respectively) and which will be able to circulate in other European capitals.

After the traditional ceremonies in Jerónimos and the joint conference at the Palácio de Belém, the media were informed that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa would accompany the Hungarian President on this more cultural visit, which was already on her initial agenda.

However, due to other commitments of Katalin Novák – who, after the meeting with the President of the Republic, also benefited from a lunch offered by the Minister of the Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, on behalf of the Prime Minister – the visit started almost 40 minutes late and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa waited long minutes for his counterpart.

The two heads of state visited the two main rooms of the museum, which brings together works by the two artists, who have been married for 55 years, lingering a little longer in the one where some of the drawings by Arpad-Szenes, born in Budapest. , Hungary, are exhibited. , in 1897.

According to information provided by the museum in a leaflet in Portuguese and Hungarian created especially for Katalin Novák’s visit, Arpad Szenes met the painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, born in Lisbon in 1908 in Paris in 1929, and they married a year later, which led the painter to lose her Portuguese nationality and to acquire that of her husband.

In 1939, in the midst of World War II, the couple applied for Portuguese nationality, but the application was refused and both left for Brazil in 1940, settled in Paris in the 1950s and accepted French nationality in 1956.

From the 1970s, major exhibitions of the two artists were held in France and Portugal, and in 1990 the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation was created in Lisbon, but the artist died two years later and did not attend more at the opening of the museum in 1994 (her husband had died in 1985).

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