[Drawings of Fernando Pessoa for Alto dos Moinhos Metro Station]

A commission from the Lisbon Metro for a plastic intervention at the Alto dos Moinhos station in the early 1980s provided Júlio Pomar with the opportunity to devote a year to refining the character of the line. Anticipating the inevitable use of public walls as supports for scribbles - more or less artistic - Pomar enters into the game of the rapid, agile, synthetic, yet expressive gesture of graffiti.

Graffiti, as a form of visual writing on the walls of public space, has its own conditions inherent to its marginal and anonymous nature. Its clandestine character justifies speed - a «brief writing». At first, Pomar used charcoal to trace the initial lines. Because the powder easily lifts when the hand passes over it, corrections can be made effortlessly. This was followed by tracing paper placed on top, on which the «correct distance between the lines» was measured and the exercise repeated. The assertiveness of graffiti requires the «rigidity of the felt tip». The final drawings, made with marker, are executed at a one-to-one scale. This means beginning immediately with large formats, which required the painter to work on the floor.

Graffiti carries with it a collective energy, often one of protest, that intrudes into everyday life and captures even the most distracted passers-by. Pomar sought this energy by drawing on the universe of Portuguese literature, bringing together erudition and popular culture. Camões, Pessoa, Almada, and Bocage inhabit the corridors, staircases, and halls of the station. Alongside the four poets, various figures appear on the walls - harlequins, mermaids, a zoo - as well as the city itself - its cafés and shoe shiners - and the events - lust and passion - that run through their verses.