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
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present themselves—and how, through the use of
poster, they evoke or extol particular kinds of
political subjects and political orders