ABSTRACT
The past inexorably shaped the present in modern art. However, the history of Portuguese art from the end of the 19th century to the end of the Estado Novo regime (in 1974), focusing on innovative paths, left behind the study of phenomena such as Neo-Baroque art, which is approached here in the strands of architecture and sculpture.
It is precisely this gap that this chapter intends to explore, demonstrating how the Baroque art of the 17th and 18th centuries was used as a propagandistic inspiration for a grandiose history linked to overseas colonialism that Portugal intended to convey abroad but also in its own territory, in different political regimes that cross this chronology. This artistic genealogy goes beyond the simple mimetic revival of the Baroque, serving as an exploratory field for new materials such as reinforced concrete and even innovative forms of synthesis, adapting to the evolution of the global modern avant-garde.
