Portraits, landscapes, buttons: The artistic career of Sarah Affonso (1899–1983)

Abstract

In this essay, I interpret Sarah Affonso’s artistic career in light of its socio-political context in order to better understand her decision to abandon painting at the end of the 1930s. The different phases of her career change in accordance with the various phases of her country’s cultural politics and it is possible that these phases are more evident in her works due to the fact that she was a woman. Sarah Affonso’s public activity began during the second decade of the Portuguese Republic and it acquired new dimensions under the Estado Novo. While her artistic production does not explicitly reflect this change in government and the new cultural policies that conditioned styles and taste during the 1930s, it is worth recognizing that, with the change in government, new measures were takenthat limited women’s freedom and rights.