An Introduction: Around Southern Modernisms

In this special issue you will find a discussion on southern modernisms stemming from an exploratory research project funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) between 2014 and 2015. As a project, southern modernisms had a theoretical and historiographical focus driven to discuss the resonances of the two words associated in its title, as well as the disquieting effect of their combination in the fields of visual arts and architecture. The first word – modernisms – stood against the standardized canon of modernism, thus bonding the research to the critical revision of that concept occurring in art history since the closing decades of the 20th century; the second word based the project in southern Europe, meaning that Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece would set the ground for selecting case studies.