The beginning of the XX century in Portugal was marked by an unstable period due to the successive fall and possession of governments during the First Republic (1910-1926). Portuguese society was far from obtaining the necessary conditions for cultural and ideological development, advancing, at a fast pace, to a rhythm that felt between Portuguese art and art realized outside the country.
The academies remained closed, maintaining the same teaching regime, valuing and continuing the classic system, where the concrete representation of the real, obtained through a copy process, is the greatest concern of the artists. The raw materials of choice remain the most traditional. In painting, the oil; In sculpture, clay is the favorite material for modeling, later passed on to a definitive material. Meanwhile, outside the new materials and technologies arouse the plastic interest of artists, contributing to the emergence of new technologies and artistic typologies, such as the introduction of iron, aluminum, stainless steel, resins and ceramics or wood agglomerates, to which followed the new avant-garde that asserted themselves against the academic tradition.
However, and partly due to experiences lived outside the national territory, we see small groups that started a modernist search with works that renounce the traditional Aristotelian aesthetics, based on mimesis, showing in their works a very personal language, a representation of the world based on a vision of its own, asserting itself as a search for a possibly truer reality that the artist would find within himself and not in the ordinary world. Contributing to a first reflection, around the art of a more expressionist and abstract nature, the works of Santa Rita Pintor and Amadeu de Souza-Cardoso, which was joined, at a later stage, by a group of students from the Porto School, where they stand out. names like Fernando Lanhas, Nadir Afonso, Manuel Pereira da Silva and Arlindo Rocha. A renewed aesthetic and literary thought began in these small organized groups, ventured into provocative strategies in the face of conservative political and cultural practices, and in a way reactionary to modernity. Orpheu magazine, published in 1915, sought to assert a great influence on modernity, and its "avant-garde" inspired inspiring literary movements, which soon aroused the worst criticism, since they proposed a cosmopolitan art in time and space, a truly art. that would bring with it the renewal of literature and the arts in Portugal. In Presença magazine (1927-1940), we witnessed a continuity of the line of thought and intervention begun with Orpheu magazine. These magazines become a source of dissemination of new aesthetic thoughts of Portuguese authors, as well as some essays by European writers. To these editions were also added exhibitions and conferences organized to show new cultural options, almost always through private initiatives. This new cultural awakening that seemed to closely follow international artistic thinking does not get much attention from the public, since the level of literacy is very low and in urban environments intellectual innovations do not take the place of the conservatism that then took place. made me feel. Portuguese society at the time was poorly culturally enlightened, remaining closed to the tastes of the old order, reinforcing the chronological and ideological mismatch between the avant-garde and the Portuguese artists. The lack of free circulation of books and information ultimately results in a lack of full awareness of the art practiced abroad.
The Estado Novo (1933-1974) became a hope against the political and economic mismanagement of Portugal due to the First Republic; To this end, the state reinforces the ideological values of God, Fatherland and Family; authority, discipline and order; corporatism and Catholicism. The fine arts become the most convenient and favorable vehicle of ideological propaganda, the country being "adorned" from north to south with small and large public works resulting in rigid buildings, lined with sculpture, painting and tapestry.
This period was associated with a nationalist art, leaving a balanced and functional mark between art and power, as demonstrated by the Portuguese World Exposition in 1940. This initiative reached dimensions never before seen, having as its mission to move to the act, in the form of commemoration, public consecration and the representative legitimacy of the state at ideological and historical level. It was up to the artists to clearly convey to the public these values, also making known the mythical Portuguese characters, extolling the grandeur of the past, which was revised in the present, hoping to achieve the same impact on the future of Portugal.
The State defines an art associated with the classical system, since it would be the best way to dialogue with the Portuguese of any social class; The artist should also punctuate the work of art with small constructive notes, subtly leading it along paths that, moving towards the synthesis of the figures, later bring it closer to abstraction. As formal synthesis is part of one's personal interpretation, the pursuit of the individualization of the artist and the pursuit of the autonomy of art become increasingly conscious. An avant-garde desire for rupture that seeks in common and personal nature a reinterpretation of the world, mirrored in the work of art without direct reference to the laws of beauty of concrete reality, is once again visible.
Portugal thus reaches a period, as far as possible, stable, where the power of the Estado Novo will be able to restore values, already lost, within Portuguese society, which, together with the action of national propaganda, through the support of the arts, ends up to shape society, making possible the cultural and ideological openness that was in great time lag with Europe. If in the opinion of some authors, the Estado Novo gives rise to social crises due to censorship and the imposition of official styles that cause some delay in the cultural development of the country, others see this period as golden, in the sense that, in the cultural context and, in For the most part, due to the work of Antonio Ferro, the government becomes an organized structure, almost as a propaganda machine for national heroic values, thus allowing the development of fine arts, regularly subsidized in an exorbitant manner. The power of the Estado Novo is transmitted to the population through its majestic work, thus making the country gain from curious examples of state-novice architecture and, in addition, the arts at the service of the state, such as sculpture, painting. , tapestry among others.
The importance and decisive action of the artistic vanguards and the necessity of their moments of rupture are therefore to value: «[the] social function of the artist in perfecting or inventing what he came to call" languages "creates conditions of awareness »of the political and social context of the time in which he lived.
In the artistic realm, the 'restrained and quiet revolution' emerged more grounded around 1945. Neorealism, Surrealism and Abstractionism are practiced in a very contained manner, accompanied by violent polemics until the mid-1950s. However, this will not be an impediment to the realization. Independent Exhibitions, or for the inauguration of the first abstract sculpture acquired by the State for a public space. Modern artists explore these new plastic languages, opposed to classical language, in the midst of a struggle for ethical and aesthetic values, before a society that, as we have seen, was not prepared to accompany them.
In this same period, there is one of the great moments of Portuguese cultural history of modern times. The rediscovery of Fernando Pessoa's work, hitherto unknown to most citizens. This author's work soon turned out to be of great interest to the national arts, allowing for the return of the lost rhythm at the beginning of the century of the first modernist manifestations, also exalted with the rediscovery of the works of Santa Rita and Amadeu, which, as we have seen, marked the first generation of modernity, which will remain a reference until the mid-1940s, as we shall see.
Ana Luisa Oliveira
MASTER IN PUBLIC SCULPTURE
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