The design of Portuguese political poster: two politics, two discourses

Abstract

This paper aims to present a history of the Portuguese political poster in two key moments of twentieth century Portuguese politics, the moment of the establishment of the ‘Estado Novo’ (or New State) i.e., Salazar’s authoritarian and quasi-fascist dictatorship which ran from 1933- 1974, and the period of the Revolution of April 25 of 1974, which overthrew the previous regime. The two distinct ideologies give rise to two contrasting modes of visual discourse. This is particularly evident in posters made in the two revolutionary moments (1933-1938 and 1974-76). These reveal ruptures in relation to the visual discourses of posters made in the periods before and after these dates. The paper shows how the posters offer a particular kind of lens on the two contrasting revolutionary moments; a way of looking at how the two revolutions attempted to communicate to and connect with the Portuguese people in whose name and one whose behalf—ostensibly in the first case, substantively in the second—the revolutions were undertaken. In terms of the understanding of activism and revolutionary graphics a contribution is made to understanding how revolutions of left and right contrastingly 2 present themselves—and how, through the use of poster, they evoke or extol particular kinds of political subjects and political orders.