Graphic Design and Illustration in Portugal in the 1940s.

This PhD thesis has as field of study the graphic design and illustration produced in Portugal during the 1940s. Its analysis focuses on four areas of investigation: a) advertising; b) design and illustration of newspapers, magazines and books; c) editorial design produced by Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional; d) design of some publications edited for the Paris Exhibition (1937), the New York and San Francisco exhibitions (1939), and the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940. Through the research of primary sources - newspapers, magazines, books, print ads, posters, other advertising material - in conjunction with texts and articles of the epoch - we aim to write a History of Graphic Design in Portugal that has in consideration not only the aesthetics of the material produced but also the historic, the economic, the sociologic and the ideological conjuncture in which this material was created. We compare the design made for state institutions with the design made for private companies to conclude that there were points of contact between the two, not only because the artists who worked in both fields were, more or less, the same, but also because the same ideological discourse was imbued in the New State propaganda and in the commercial production as well. There were, however, pockets of resistance from other aesthetical proposals and imaginaries, like surrealism and neo-realism. António Ferro, director of the Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional, knew how to employ the talent of a number of artists to create a visual identity for Portugal, an identity that would synthesize elements of popular art with a modern structure. Through several activities that identity was developed and replicated but it is in the working opportunities given to the modernist artists that the true legacy of António Ferro to the Portuguese Graphic Design lays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]