Cursos / 1º Ciclo / Faculty of Architecture and Arts :: Architecture ( Integrated Master)

HISTÓRIA DA ARTE CONTEMPORÃNEA - 2025/2026

1º curricular year
Semestralidade: 2nd semester
ECTS: 2

Teachers

Leading Teacher: Prof. Doutor Alberto Estima
Assistant Professor: Prof. Doutor Alberto Estima

Class type and School hours

Teórica : 2 Horas

Teaching Language

Portuguese

Main Aims/Objectives

- Understand the historical and cultural transformations that occurred in the 20th century, and in particular, the avant-garde movements associated with it.
- Relate the avant-garde movements in the Visual Arts with Architecture throughout the 20th century.
- Assess the (in)convenience of the contemporary concept, applied in the restricted sense, post-World War II to the present, in a space of Western hegemony.

Specific Aims/Objectives

- Analyze the main avant-garde movements in the Visual Arts produced in the 1st and 2nd half of the 20th century, in the so-called Western world, and connect it with Architecture. - Relate what unites and what differs in artistic production from the first to the second half of the 20th century. - Infer the growing role of the visual artist and architect in contemporary society.

Skills to be acquired

- Identify and discern in the artistic avant-garde movements that operated in the 20th century those that, despite having changed little or a lot, continue to be active.
- Relate artists and works, knowing how to clarify the most significant ones.

Teaching Procedures

Classes will be colloquial, using bibliography and examples chosen for analysis, and will also be open to debate.

Programme

1 – Historical-cultural context of the 20th century.
2 – The European artistic avant-garde movements from 1880 to 1914.
3 – The two wars and between two world wars: new artistic and anti-artistic avant-gardes. Nazi persecutions against avant-garde art. New York welcomes European exiles and dethrones Paris as artistic capital. The triumph of the first American artistic avant-garde.
4 – The recovery of the European avant-gardes in the 1940s and 1960s. The rupture of the 1960s and 1970s, reconstruction and the “end of the avant-garde”
5 – From the 80s to the present: neo and post-avant-garde.

Evaluation Type

Two written tests without consultation plus the respective frequency at the end of the semester.

Teaching Resources

- From the most traditional projection methods to the most modern ones such as online documentaries.
- Films, colloquia, exhibitions (within the university).

Sustainability Objectives

In the face of the climate emergency, the loss of biodiversity and inequalities and asymmetries
social, the proposed Program aims to contribute to the achievement of SDG 4
(Quality Education), ensuring that all students acquire knowledge and
qualifications needed to promote sustainable development; and for SDG 11
(Sustainable Cities and Communities), promoting attitudes of preservation, protection and
conservation of all built and natural cultural heritage.

Keywords

- History
- Art
- Vanguards

Main Bibliography

Complementary Bibliography