Much like in other European countries, the first few decades of the twentieth century in Portugal saw the emergence of various creative ideas related to modernity and the avant-garde.

The ‘Portuguese avant-garde’ collection of Archivo Lafuente brings together several dozens of publications (printed matter, manifestos, magazines and books), which were a sounding board for said avant-garde ideas in Portugal, exercising great aesthetic and ideological influence over the Portuguese intelligentsia in the first half of the twentieth century.

The collection comprises manifestos, books and pamphlets by the likes of Saúl Dias, Manuel de Lima, Antonio Pedro, Jorge de Sena, Carlos Queiroz, Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Fernando Pessoa (such as Ultimatum, a supplement of the magazine Portugal Futurista, signed by the heteronym of Pessoa, Alvaro de Campos) and Almada Negreiros (such as his celebrated Manifesto Anti-Dantas). It is also composed of magazines, such as Manifesto, published in Coimbra by Albano Nogueira and Miguel Torga, the Lisbon-based publications Sudoeste (run by José de Almada Negreiros), Contemporanea (José Pacheco), Portugal Futurista (Carlos Filipe Porfirio), Athena (Fernando Pessoa and Ruy Vaz) and Orpheu (Pessoa and Mario de Sá-Carneiro), and copies of the Madrid-based magazine La farsa, illustrated by Almada Negreiros.