Catalogue from the exhibition:
Eduardo Afonso Dias: The possible Design (17 Apr. 2014 > 06 Jul. 2014)

About the exhibition:
"Many visitors will recognize as familiar several of the cutlery sets, the cutlery pieces and the containers, pottery or utensils on display. Serially produced and marketed in various markets, they changed attitudes, habits and behaviours. Today they are the testimony of a time of changing: the first years of democratic life, after April 25, 1974, and the two following decades, marked by Portugal’s entrance in the European Economic Community and the profound political and economic transformations that Portuguese society experienced.  Author of a wide and diverse work ranging from interior to graphic design, from exhibition design to the design of equipments and utensils, Eduardo Afonso Dias has a pragmatic intelligence and constructive imagination, as Daciano da Costa recognized. He designed, redesigned and marketed over 500 products later commercialized through Europe, highlighting to Scandinavia, United States, Canada and Australia. As a result of 50 years of career, Eduardo Afonso Dias knows as few the Portuguese business world.   He always argued that differentiation and excellence of products, combined with a concerted communication, marketing, sale and distribution strategies were the only way for a full and solid affirmation of the Portuguese economy. He took the pulse of companies and Portuguese entrepreneurs reality; he came to know foreign markets, seeking to endow the existing knowledge in each company with pragmatism, timing, unique risk capacity, some persuasive skills and a dose of intuition.   He founded cooperatives, formed teams and companies, travelled across the country and abroad in behalf of what he believed was the key role of design in the modernization and development of a people and a country. Far from any formalistic bias or theoretical intention, Eduardo Afonso Dias was true to himself and to his understanding of industrial design, even when the paths pointed to the development of an author design.

The phrase so often repeated throughout his life, and thus the perfect choice as title of this exhibition, – the design possible, documented by Fernando Assis Pacheco, in 1984 – describes the eminently practical and operational sense distinguishing this artist. Knowing his work is recognizing a humanistic design, leading us to photography and his gallery of both known and anonymous faces, landscapes, places, objects, artefacts and crafts, where he seeks unusual perspectives and cinematic plans.

One of the major references of Portuguese design, his path and work are also a metaphor of the potential, the vicissitudes and the misunderstandings of design in Portugal over the last 50 years."

Editorial concept and coordination Bárbara Coutinho, Paula Guimarães
Institucional text Catarina Vaz Pinto
Essays Bárbara Coutinho, Fernando Conduto, José Brandão, Maria Helena Souto, Fernando Moreira da Silva Interview with Eduardo Afonso Dias Rui Carreto
Graphic design Paula Guimarães

Publisher: MUDE
Language: bilingual Portuguese / English.
Pages: 272, hard cover.
Size: 21 x 15 x 2,5 cm.