Brazilian Fine Arts: An Introduction
Modern art in Brazil has a kind of official birth date. It was in February 1922 that the Municipal Theatre in São Paulo staged Modern Art Week. This staging of events in various fields was the result of joint efforts by intellectuals, poets and artists patronized and sponsored by the so-called "Coffee Barons", the great merchants whose fortunes derived from the cultivation and/or export of that product.
Obviously modern art in Brazil was not actually "born" on any precise date. Certain events anticipated Modern Art Week, in particular a controversial exhibition in 1917 by Anita Malfatti, who had studied in Germany and whose painting clearly showed the influence of expressionism. Be that as it may, 1922 (which was also the centenary year of Brazilian independence and marked the foundation of the country's Communist Party) became the symbolic date.
A participant and major supporter of Modern Art Week (as of all the progressive intellectual movements of the ensuing decades) was the poet and critic Mário de Andrade, who in 1942 referred to it as an "essentially destructive" movement. But it was not really this. Certainly it also had its iconoclastic side, but it built far more than it destroyed. It supplied the point of departure for both an aesthetic and a practice of the twentieth century in what was until then a very conservative tradition. The principal artists who took part in Modern Art Week were the painters Anita Malfatti (1896-1964), Vicente do Rêgo Monteiro (1899-1970), John Graz (1891-1980) and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, as well as Victor Brecheret (1894-1955), the greatest figurative sculptor of the twentieth century in Brazil.
Throughout the 1930s, the new aesthetic and the new practice, though remaining within the limits of figurativism, grew steadily stronger in Brazil, not only through the actions of groups but through the work of individual artists. This period can be given the generic title of modernism. Its figurative nature did not have the historical / epic character which formed the basis, for example, of the Mexican murals of the period. In Brazil there had never been a developed pre-Colombian culture, such as that of the Incas, Mayas or Aztecs; the Indians of Brazil were at a much more rudimentary stage of civilization. The rescue of an ancient cultural identity destroyed by European colonizers was never therefore a national Brazilian concern. Clearly this did not prevent some artists from trying to identify and include in their work something that might be termed "Brazilian-ness".
From the beginning of the 1930s on, new modernist groups appeared, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. As a rule, they did not have direct links either with their predecessors or with the participants in Modern Art Week, nor were they concerned in theorizing their art. The modernism of the 1920s was erudite, internationalist in tendency and, in a certain way, elitist. The art of the new groups strove to reflect and participate directly in social life. Perhaps for this reason it was stylistically somewhat traditionalist - which, however, did not mean any return to the academic past.
The years 1931 to 1942 in Rio saw the work of the "Bernadelli Nucleus", the principal members of which were Bustamente Sá (1907-1988), Eugênio Sigaud (1899-1979), Milton Dacosta (1915-1988), Quirino Campofiorito (1902-1993) and José Pancetti (1904-1958). The Pro Modern Art Society (SPAM) and the Modern Artists Club (CAM) were both founded in São Paulo in 1932. Perhaps through being in São Paulo (where Modern Art Week had taken place), SPAM retained some links with the first wave of modernism. The most important artists who were members were the Lithuanian immigrant Lasar Segall (1891-1980), Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) and the sculptor Victor Brecheret (1894-1955). At the CAM, the undisputed leader was Flávio de Carvalho (1899-1973).
Finally , in 1935/36, again in São Paulo, certain painters came together in an informal grouping which is known today as the Santa Helena Group. The principal artists were Francisco Rebolo (1903-1980), Aldo Bonadei (1906-1974), Mário Zanini (1907-1971), Clóvis Graciano (1907-1988) and Alfredo Volpi. The Santa Helena Group is an excellent example of the changes that had occurred since Modern Art Week, which had been sponsored and patronized by the coffee barons. The artists of the Santa Helena Group were of humble background, immigrants or children of immigrants, and produced an art which was simple, everyday, even proletarian in a certain sense.
After the movements of the 1930s, modern art was finally well established in Brazil. The 1940s saw the first flowering of Cândido Portinari (1903-1962), Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896-1962), José Pancetti (1904-1958) etc. The sculptors Bruno Giorgi (1905-1993) and Alfredo Ceschiatti (1918-1989) started their careers. Various future representatives of abstract art also started to work, even though still figurative at this stage. Starting in the 1940s and continuing up to today, a powerful individuality is to be seen in the work of the figurative draftsman and engraver Marcelo Grassmann (1925), which inhabits an unmistakable universe, related to the age old expressionist and fantastic traditions of the art of Central Europe. Grassmann creates a world of medieval knights and ladies, visions and monsters, conjured up by the dream of reason, in Goya's words.
With rare exceptions (in particular, the Engraving Club of Porto Alegre, founded in 1950, which until now represents the most politicized movement in Brazilian art, concentrating on social realism), the 1950s and 1960s saw the triumph of abstract trends. Only after 1965, when the exhibition Opinion 65 was held in Rio, did a new generation return to figurative art. This return followed the same pattern observable in the rest of the world: figurative art of a critical character, frequently socially engaged, chronicling contemporary mores and the consumer society, influenced by pop art, and so on. Opinion 65 was the first of a series of exhibitions and events, investigations into language and quests for the new in every sense. The main participants were Antonio Dias (1944), Carlos Vergara (1941), Hélio Oiticica (1937), Roberto Magalhães (1940) and Rubens Gerchman (1942). Mention should also be made of the Rex Group (1966/67), the Biennial of Bahia (1966 and 1988) and the New Brazilian Objectivity show (1967).
In step with what was happening in the rest of the world, the 1970s in Brazil began with a certain slowing down of avant-garde trends. "The early feelings of the 1970s involved the substitution of reflection for activism, reason for emotion, concepts for objects and, in extreme cases, art for life" wrote the critic Frederico Morais (Cadernos História da Pintura no Brasil, volume 6, Instituto Cultural Itaú). From such attitudes sprang conceptual art, which has also flourished in Brazil.
Among the most significant artists linked in some way to conceptualist trends, mention should be made of Mira Schendel (1919-1988) - who was really an eclectic and very varied artist who investigated many different tendencies -, Waltércio Caldas (1946), Artur Alípio Barrio (1945), Cildo Meirelles (1948) and Tunga (1952). Curiously enough, the four last artists mentioned all live in Rio de Janeiro. In São Paulo the tradition of object-making proved stronger, and artists such as Luis Paulo Baravelli (1942), José Rezende (1945) and Carlos Fajardo (1941) formulated their own ideas without rejecting historical precedents. Finally, certain artists who are now flourishing reached their maturity during the 1970s and remained essentially independent from the international avant-garde, whose works continued to be seen in Brazil through the Biennials. These artists could be termed today's masters.
The 1980s and 1990s in Brazil, as in every other country of western culture, have revealed an ocean of trends and styles, plans and projects, which have brought every expressive resource of humanity to the service of art. The artist of today is aware that, formally speaking, everything is permissible, and that there are no language barriers or prescribed materials or collective platforms. Reflecting this pluralist spirit, 1984 saw the mounting of an exhibition in Rio which became a watershed. It was called "How Are You, Generation 80?". No less than 123 artists, who were then on average in their early twenties, commenced careers which continue to flourish today. We close this introduction with a short list of names whose present and future work is certainly worth close attention: Marcos Coelho Benjamin, Karin Lambrecht, Sérgio Fingermann, Nuno Ramos, Paulo Monteiro, Carlito Carvalhosa, Daniel Senise, Emanuel Nassar, Osmar Pinheiro, Leda Catunda, Luiz Aquila, Chico Cunha, Cristina Canale, Ângelo Venosa, Sérgio Niculitcheff.
by Olívio Tavares de Araújo
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