Interested from an early age in the potential of engraving, especially the gradations of blacks and their dramatic effects, and based on his experience of travelling through a war-torn Europe, Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos comments in his works on social and political concerns. Through the construction of enigmatic and inhospitable settings, he uses a repertoire of figures identifiable with national deeds and a moribund church to convey a critical message.

In The Ship of Fools, he satirises the idea of a nation adrift, heading blindly towards a senseless conflict, the colonial war. In Bishop's Meeting he criticises the dictatorial regimes of the peninsula and their heavy religious hierarchical structure, contaminated by power. The Feast evokes a post-apocalyptic scenario of mass destruction, where disfigured spectral figures gather in a once convivial setting, before the figure in the foreground who serves them and questions us with his empty gaze.