João Abel Manta Dies at 98 — The Cartoonist Who Drew Portugal Through Salazar and the Carnation Revolution

João Abel Manta — architect by training, plastic artist by reputation, and the most influential Portuguese political cartoonist of the late-Salazar and post-25-de-Abril decades — died at his Lisbon home on Friday 15 May 2026, the family confirmed to Lusa. He was 98.

His death was announced through the national wire on Friday evening and triggered formal tributes through Saturday from the Presidência da República, the Ministério da Cultura and the country's principal cultural institutions. Manta's career stretched from a 1951 architecture degree through six decades of cartoons, illustrations, ceramic murals, tapestries and azulejos that, taken together, supply much of the visual memory the Portuguese public retains of the closing years of the Estado Novo and the opening years of the democratic republic.

A life across formats

Manta was born in 1928 into one of Portugal's notable painter families — his father, Abel Manta, and his mother, Clementina Carneiro de Moura, were both established artists. He trained as an architect and qualified in 1951, briefly practising before progressively redirecting his work toward the plastic arts. By the mid-1950s he was already producing ceramic panels for the Teatro Gil Vicente in Coimbra (1955), and by 1959 he had completed the azulejo programme for the buildings of the Associação Académica de Coimbra.

It was as a cartoonist and illustrator, however, that he reached the widest audience. In the years immediately before and after the 25 de Abril revolution he was a fixture of Portugal's leading high-circulation papers — the Diário de Lisboa, the Diário de Notícias, O Jornal and the Jornal de Letras, where he served as the first art director. Two compilations of that work — Cartoons, 1969-1975 (1975) and Caricaturas Portuguesas dos Anos de Salazar, originally published by Edições O Jornal in 1978 — are still the standard references for visual political satire of the period.

The public art the city still walks on

Manta's signature is also embedded in the surfaces of Lisbon itself. He designed the mosaic pavement intervention at the Praça dos Restauradores and a comparable scheme in the Figueira da Foz, and the large ceramic-mural revestimento of the Avenida Calouste Gulbenkian — applied in 1980 — remains one of the most prominent examples of public-art tile-work in the capital. For anyone who walks the city regularly the work is unavoidable; it is, in the literal sense, under foot.

'A historian in motion'

The President of the Republic, António José Seguro, issued a formal statement of condolences through the Presidência's website on Saturday morning. "Com o seu desaparecimento, Portugal despede-se de um dos seus grandes artistas, um retratista que marcou a vida portuguesa nos anos imediatamente anteriores e posteriores à revolução do 25 de Abril de 1974, uma das referências mais importantes do cartoon político desde os anos 40 até à atualidade," the head of state wrote.

Seguro singled out the way Manta moved between disciplines — and the reason he ultimately concentrated on drawing. The artist, the President noted, devoted himself "mais intensamente, e desde bem cedo, à área do desenho e das artes gráficas, onde podia participar mais ativamente na luta contra o regime político da época." Distinguished with the Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada and the Ordem da Liberdade, Manta "retratou-nos a todos, incluiu-nos a todos nas suas preciosas caricaturas. Na verdade, ele foi um historiador em movimento e nada lhe escapou do que estava a mudar ou prestes a mudar-nos."

The Minister for Culture, Youth and Sport, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, used a post on X to call Manta "um talentoso artista da liberdade com vários ofícios" who leaves "uma marca inquestionável na nossa história e imaginário, especialmente como cartoonista e ilustrador antes e depois do 25 de Abril." The Presidência indicated that further institutional tributes would be coordinated through next week, when scheduling of a public homage will be considered.

Why his work travelled

What set Manta apart, in the words of the President's note, was "a sua capacidade de captar pormenores e de os transformar em grandes emblemas de um momento histórico." His drawings tended to function as visual editorials — the cartoon was rarely a punchline; it was a compressed argument about the country. That feature gave the work a long half-life: the same cartoons that circulated in 1973 still appear regularly in Portuguese history textbooks and in retrospectives at the Calouste Gulbenkian and at Lisbon's municipal galleries.

Where to see his work in Portugal

• Lisbon — Avenida Calouste Gulbenkian: the 1980 ceramic mural revestimento is the largest single piece of his public work and is permanently visible from the avenue.
• Lisbon — Praça dos Restauradores: the mosaic pavement intervention designed by Manta is part of the surface of the square itself.
• Coimbra — Teatro Gil Vicente and Associação Académica de Coimbra: the 1955 ceramic panels and 1959 azulejos remain in situ.
• Figueira da Foz: the mosaic-pavement scheme in the seafront promenade.
• Printed editions: Cartoons, 1969-1975 and Caricaturas Portuguesas dos Anos de Salazar are still in circulation through second-hand booksellers and most municipal-library lending systems.

What this means for residents and expats

• Public homage likely next week: the Ministry of Culture and the Presidência have signalled that a formal homenagem will be scheduled. Expect short-notice closures or queueing at any institutional site that chooses to host it.
• The Carnation Revolution context still matters: Manta's body of work is one of the densest visual records of the run-up to and aftermath of the 25 de Abril revolution. For new arrivals trying to read Portugal's political vocabulary, his cartoons are still one of the shortest routes in. See our guide to the Carnation Revolution at 52 and the still-unresolved Museu da Revolução file for the broader institutional picture.
• Cultural scheduling pressures: the death lands during the same week that the Lisbon cultural-agents petition Festas Sem Abril is still active — the political conversation about how the state pays for Portuguese cultural memory is not going to quieten down in the short term.
• If you want to mark the moment in person: the simplest non-institutional gesture is to walk the Avenida Calouste Gulbenkian and the Praça dos Restauradores in daylight. Both are public, free and on the surface — the work has been there the whole time; the next few weeks may simply be a useful reason to actually look at it.

President Seguro closed his note on Saturday with the line that Manta's portraits and caricatures "fazem de João Abel Manta um dos artistas mais populares do nosso país até hoje." The proof of that, for now, sits in the surfaces of Lisbon and Coimbra and on the spines of two slim books that have not gone out of print in nearly half a century.