Modernism in Brazil

also: Brazilian modernism

movement c. 1920-1950 Brazil Latin America

Modernism in Brazil was a broad cultural movement that reshaped the country's art and society in the first half of the twentieth century. It drew on European trends encountered before the First World War - Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism - gradually assimilating these new languages while insisting on national identity. Its landmark was the Modern Art Week, held in São Paulo in 1922 in the independence centenary, whose poetry, music and exhibitions opened the door to a new artistic language. The first, 'heroic' generation worked through manifestos and provocation: Oswald de Andrade's Anthropophagic Manifesto of 1928 famously proposed 'swallowing' foreign influences and digesting them into something Brazilian. Later generations turned to social, political and regional themes, especially the prose and imagery of the country's Northeast.

Mário de Andrade (primeiro à esquerda, no alto), Rubens Borba de Moraes (sentado, segundo da esquerda para a direita) e outros modernistas d
Mário de Andrade (primeiro à esquerda, no alto), Rubens Borba de Moraes (sentado, segundo da esquerda para a direita) e outros modernistas dPublic domain (credit: Unknown author Unknown author) · source

Defining characteristics

  • European avant-garde structures - Cubist fragmentation, Expressionist distortion - applied to Brazilian subjects
  • Bold, saturated tropical palette and stylized, simplified figures
  • Anthropophagic appropriation: foreign influences digested and remade as national art
  • Flattened pictorial space and emphatic contours
  • National subject matter: regional people, folklore, tropical landscape, everyday life

Key figures

  • Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) — Painter whose Abaporu became the emblem of the Anthropophagic movement
  • Anita Malfatti (1889-1964) — Her 1917 solo exhibition introduced modernist painting to Brazil
  • Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) — Writer of the Anthropophagic Manifesto (1928) and theorist of the movement
  • Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) — Poet, novelist and animator of the 1922 Modern Art Week
  • Di Cavalcanti (1897-1988) — Painter of everyday Brazilian life and a leading exhibitor at the 1922 Week

Example works

  • Abaporu — Tarsila do Amaral (1928)
  • A Negra — Tarsila do Amaral (1923)

Sources

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