Lisbon, June 25, 2026 (Lusa) - Veritas Art Auctioneers announced on Tuesday that the oil painting “White Glass: The Beauty of Objects” by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887–1918) sold for €476,000 at an auction held on Wednesday in Lisbon.
The oil-on-canvas work, dated 1915–1916, which had remained in the artist’s family’s possession for years, went under the hammer with a starting bid of €375,000 at the modern and contemporary art auction.
The artist himself displayed the painting at the historic exhibitions held in Porto and Lisbon in 1916, and, according to Veritas’s press release, “a private Portuguese collector acquired it”.
When contacted by the Lusa news agency, a source at the auction house specified that the “hammer price was set at €390,000, to which the auction house’s commission was added, bringing the total sale price to €476,340”.
During the auction, “competition among bidders drove the price steadily above the estimate”, the same source added.
“White Glass: The Beauty of Objects” had previously been offered for auction on 1 October 2021 in Lisbon by Cabral Moncada Leilões, with the same reserve price of €375,000 and an estimate of €562,500; however, bidding reached a different level on that occasion.
Measuring 50 by 40 centimetres, the painting belongs to the final period of Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s artistic output, “a phase marked by formal experimentation and the assimilation of styles linked to Cubism and the European avant-garde”, Veritas noted in its press release.
The artist exhibited the work at shows held in Porto and Lisbon in 1916, considered pivotal moments for the affirmation of artistic modernity in Portugal, and the artist’s family retained it for a significant part of its history.
According to Veritas, the exhibition history of the painting—which is recorded in the artist’s Catalogue Raisonné, published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation—spans more than a century and “traces some of the most significant moments in the critical reception of Amadeo’s work”.
In addition to the 1916 exhibitions, “White Glass: The Beauty of Objects” was included in the major retrospectives dedicated to the artist at the Palácio Foz in Lisbon and at the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto in 1959.
The painting was also featured in an exhibition held in 1985 at the Jornal de Notícias Gallery in Porto, and in the exhibition “Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso: Dialogue of the Avant-Gardes”, organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2006.
Organisers also included it in the major retrospective dedicated to the artist, held in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris, France.
Born in Manhufe, Amarante, in 1887, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso is regarded as one of the central figures of modern Portuguese art and one of the most prominent representatives of the European avant-garde movements of the early 20th century.
After settling in Paris in 1906, he came into contact with some of the leading artistic movements of the time, associating with artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brâncuși and Robert Delaunay.
The pneumonic flu pandemic that ravaged Europe in 1918 brought his career to a close at the age of 30. Despite his brief life, he left behind a body of work that continues to be widely studied and exhibited in museums and at national and international exhibitions.
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