Art and Revolution:

What Colour Are the Red Carnations of April?

Abstract

The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, celebrated in 2024, was marked by a series of initiatives promoted by the scientific, artistic and political sectors that called on the community to reflect on the historical importance of this date. In this context, and still in time to contribute to the debates sparked in Portugal, France, Brazil and some Portuguese-speaking African countries, we have organised the dossier entitled Art and Revolution: What Colour are the Red Carnations of April? The aim is to bring together contributions that analyse the testimonies that music, theatre, literature, cinema, and performance, among other forms of artistic manifestation, have left in history about this specific and complex period that, in Portugal, was inaugurated by the Carnation Revolution, and which lasts until mid-1976, in the so called ‘Ongoing Revolutionary Process’. Considering that, from the Carnation Revolution onwards, between the joy of the present, the hope for tomorrow and the remorse of the past, Portuguese artists had to learn to deal with the newly won freedom, realising that, in this context, the issues to be voiced through art were different, we want to address questions such as: What changed in the relationship that had previously existed between the arts and politics? How did the different forms of artistic manifestation in Portugal address the new themes at the centre of the Portuguese political sphere? How did art and artists reflect/react to the idea of a revolution? What artistic echoes did April trigger in the international sphere? And how did artists from the new countries in Africa (Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, S. Tomé and Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique), which until then had been subject to colonialism, deal with the premises of struggle, liberation, revolution and independence?