In May 1974, the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes organised a series of meetings which gave rise to the movement of visual artists Movimento Democrático de Artistas Plásticos. On 10 June 1974, the Movimento Democrático de Artistas Plásticos, in collaboration with the MFA, an organisation of officers in the Portuguese Armed Forces which led the Revolution of 25 April, decided to create a huge collective painting at the Galeria de Arte Moderna de Belém, in a creative community effort which brought together 48 names from the 1970s Portuguese art scene. Júlio Pomar appeared alongside artists such as Noronha da Costa, Fernando de Azevedo, Joaquim Rodrigo, Lourdes Castro, João Vieira, Costa Pinheiro, Eduardo Batarda, António Palolo, among others.

The film screened on a loop at the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar throughout the day on 25 April to mark the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the revolution of 25 April is ‘Pintura Colectiva – Movimento Democrático dos Artistas Plásticos’ [Collective Painting – Democratic Movement of Visual Artists], Instituto de Tecnologia Educativa, 1975, with a duration of 14 minutes, deposited at the Cinemateca – ANIM Department (National Moving Image Archive). The film documents this beautiful creative moment, imbued with an intense revolutionary spirit.

Excerpt from ‘Elementos Biográficos’, from the second volume of the Catalogue Raisonné of Júlio Pomar:

1974

The 25 April revolution caught him by surprise in Portugal, where he remained until June. He participated in public artistic interventions, most notably the occultation of the statue of Salazar at the Palácio Foz, the main headquarters of the former regime’s cultural policy, and the 10 June festival, during which forty eight artists produced a collective painting to celebrate the victory of freedom. On this occasion, given the sudden interruption of the transmission of a theatre performance on television, which revealed the contradictions of the Portuguese political situation, he wrote the phrase ‘Censorship exists’ on his part of the panel. The painting was later destroyed in a fire.

Text by Júlio Pomar, 1974

In 1974, Júlio Pomar wrote the following article for the Expresso, in the ‘Mudam-se os tempos… Artistas e Escritores falam ao Expresso’ [Changing times: artists and writers speak to the Expresso] section, on 13 July, p. 22:

“The PRACTICE, or use, of art is a form of knowledge in action. Knowledge in action requires, and is, freedom. Freedom is the objective of revolutionary practice.

To say that art is (or should be) at the service of the revolution, or the revolution at the service of art, etc., is to introduce the foetid dialectic of the master and the servant where it has no place, that is, in freedom. It is to use the enemy’s weapons in the same way as he does, that is, badly. So badly that he lost them. (if only!).

All forms of knowledge or revolutionary practice stultify and negate if it is not acknowledged that the project differs from its implementation, the idea from fact. Acknowledging that which occurs unforeseen is a characteristic of art and of revolutionary practice.

When the revolution serves, it becomes opportunism. The revolution which is subordinated is called reformism. Art which accepts subordination serves obscurantism, censorship, repression. Identifying obscurantism, censorship, repression, exclusively with the ousted regime, or with another authority, is to vote wholeheartedly for its continuation.

All events leave their mark. May 68 in Paris or April 74 in Lisbon, a magnificent encounter, daily life, everything which affects the strength of the revolution acts on our capacity to be different. Everything takes place, not in an automatic relationship of cause and effect, but on the margins where difference breaks through. Meaningful revolutionary practice is coupled with knowledge of the new, as is art.”