In 1982, scarcely eight years after the revolution of April 25th, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation organized the exhibition "The 40’s in Portuguese Art", based on two assumptions: that the generations are not improvised and somehow depend on one another, and the notion of the difficulty that the Portuguese feel in knowing themselves culturally in a tried and true continuity (Azevedo, 1982).

That is also the purpose of the project "Cultural Geography of the Portuguese 20th Century ": proposing a reading program of the Portuguese culture of the 20th century.

Thus, it starts from a historical and critical perspective, framing the different periods politically and socially. To understand this transversal view of a century of changes in Portugal is necessary to contextualise the internal and the external. Then, we will present possible lines of interpretation of this significant period, starting with sectoral analyses of artistic and cultural creation, in the fields of plastic arts, literature, music, ballet, theatre and cinema, photography and sport.