By Luciano Migliaccio
In Laboratory Interior the ambiance, invaded by meridian light from the door-window, is constructed by rapid brush strokes of thick color, in which white and the earth yellows predominate, with accented green and light blue in the blotched trees and sky in the background. The abandoned tools, as if in a pause from work, seem to await the human presence’s return, suggesting a suspension of time and revealing the frozen instant similar to that from the camera’s lens. The painter’s naturalist view does not dissolve with the energy of brush strokes, but is revealed in a construction undertaken with pure colors, closely resembling that of Vlaminck. For José Augusto França, Sousa Pinto was the artist who best established the connection between Portuguese painting and of the Paris School. He defined the relationships between Portughese art and the international artistic milieu in the French capital, delineating the limits of his generation. This work illustrates the Portuguese painter’s interpretation of the new and rich color possibilities revealed in Postimpressionist painting.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998