Modernism

A cosmopolitan aesthetic atmosphere which defined European and international arts and culture at the turn of the last century and particularly marked the first two or three decades of the twentieth century.

In Portugal, the tendency has generally been linked with the figures of Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiros and many others, and is centred around the magazine Orpheu (first issue printed in 1915).

The aesthetics of modernism was quintessentially one of diversity (being clearly visible in other adjacent aesthetics and avant-garde movements - sensationism, Paulism, intersectionism, etc.), representing a questioning of established ethical and literary values, a feeling of euphoria in the face of innovations in literary technique, and the freeing of literary writing from all conventions and rules. The movement was later to mark the twentieth century in a remarkably acute fashion, to such an extent that it has constantly been linked to the theories and controversies surrounding two other relatively indeterminate historical, literary and aesthetic notions (modernity and post-modernism), which can only usefully be explained by their actual origins.

In Portuguese literature, the magazine Presença (edited by José Régio and João Gaspar Simões) was understood by some as representing the “modernist counter-revolution” (Eduardo Lourenço), and was seen by others as a kind of “second modernism”.

"Orpheu",  No. 1, January-February-March, 1915

© Instituto Camões, 2001