Art and Revolution

Abstract

This essay is a part of the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its theme is the connexion between the Russian Revolution and Arts, and, specifically, the dialectic between artistic and political vanguard - between art and politics. The essay approaches this dialectic through the life and work of Mário Pedrosa. When it came to discuss Revolution and Art, Pedrosa showed himself as an original socialist. He was quite articulated in the European artistic vanguards since the first decades of the XXth Century. He also established an organic relationship between Art and political militancy. Through the works of many thinkers like Calder and Mondrian, and socialists such as Rosa Luxemburgo, Trotski and C.L.R James, Pedrosa built an political-aesthetic point of view that always placed him right into Arts and Politics vanguards.