From modernism to nationalism: different responses to the political context of the Portuguese Estado Novo

Abstract

One of the main characteristics of the generations of architects trained in Portugal, in the Schools of Fine Arts of Lisbon and Porto, before 1940, is the eclectic character of their architecture. The generality of the works built since 1925 (in this first wave of Portuguese architectural modernism) have the origins of their avant-garde character in this eclectic formation, in the face of an intuitive perception of the opportunity for formal experimentation created by the use of new construction materials, new programs or new possibilities for articulating existing programs. Thus, the first works of Cristino da Silva (1896-1976), Cassiano Branco (1897-1970), Pardal Monteiro (1897-1957), Carlos Ramos (1897-1969), Cottinelli Telmo (1897-1948), Raul Rodrigues Lima (1909-80), Keil do Amaral (1910-75), Januário Godinho (1910-10) and Viana de Lima (1913-91), among others, denote a new plastic sensitivity of its authors. But this modernization of language does not prevent a subsequent change in the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s: in the work of the majority of the architects of the so-called ‘first modern generation’ there was an improbable transition from modern language to the dictates of the Estado Novo. Nevertheless, the analysis of this phenomenon must be done avoiding a generalization of the discourse, which being incorrect is also unfair for many of these actors; in this peculiar but very heterogeneous phenomenon, each case is a different case.