The creation of art in the geographic area now known as Brazil begins with the earliest records of its human habitation. The original inhabitants of the land, pre-Columbian Indigenous or Natives peoples, produced various forms of art; specific cultures like the Marajoara left sophisticated painted pottery. This area was colonized by Portugal in the 16th century and given the modern name of Brazil. Brazilian art is most commonly used as an umbrella term for art created in this region post Portuguese colonization.
One of the most sophisticated kinds of Pre-Columbian artifact found in Brazil is the sophisticated Marajoara pottery (c. 800–1400 AD), from cultures flourishing on Marajó Island and around the region of Santarém, decorated with painting and complex human and animal reliefs. Statuettes and cult objects, such as the small carved-stone amulets called muiraquitãs, also belong to these cultures.[3] The Mina and Periperi cultures, from Maranhão and Bahia, produced interesting though simpler pottery and statuettes.
In the beginning of the 21st century, the ancient Indian traditions of body painting, pottery, cult statuettes, and feather art are still being cultivated by the remaining Indian peoples.
Cave paintings, Serra da Capivara National Park.
Shark-shaped carved stone, Sambaqui culture, Museu da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.
The first Western artists active in Brazil were Roman Catholic priests who came from Portugal to "civilize" the Indians. Jesuits assumed an important role in this process, with their many missionary establishments called "Reductions" teaching religion through art in the form of sacred plays, music, statuary, and painting. José de Anchieta was the first important playwright; Agostinho de Jesus and Agostinho da Piedade produced the first known sculptures; Belchior Paulo, João Filipe Bettendorff, Ricardo do Pilar, and a few others did the first paintings; while Francisco de Vaccas and Pedro da Fonseca started organizing the musical life of the infant colony. Basílio da Gama and Gregório de Mattos were the first secular poets. All of them worked under the influence of the Baroque, the dominant style in Brazil until the early 19th century.[4][5]
One single event in the 19th century sowed the seeds for a complete renewal in Brazilian visual arts: the arrival of the French Artistic Mission in 1816, which strongly reinforced the Neoclassical style, previously seen in Brazil only in timid attempts. Joachim Lebreton, its leader, proposed the creation of an Academy of Fine Arts, later restructured as the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. The academy was the most important center for the visual arts through nearly the whole of the 19th century. It imposed a new concept of artistic education and was the basis for a revolution in Brazilian painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic arts, and crafts.[7] A few decades later, under the personal patronage of Emperor Pedro II, who was engaged in an ambitious national project of modernization, the academy reached its golden age, fostering the emergence of the first generation of Romantic painters. Victor Meirelles and Pedro Américo, among others, produced lasting visual symbols of national identity. It must be said that in Brazil Romanticism in painting took a peculiar shape, not showing the overwhelming dramaticism, fantasy, violence, or interest in death and the bizarre commonly seen in the European version, and because of its academic and palatial nature all excesses were eschewed.[8][9][10]
Meanwhile, literature too evolved towards a romantic-nationalist school with the works of Casimiro de Abreu and Manuel Antônio de Almeida. Around 1850, a transition began, centered upon Álvares de Azevedo, who was influenced by the poetry of Lord Byron. This second generation of Romantics was obsessed with morbidness and death, and soon after, social commentary could be found in literature, both features not seen in the visual arts. Antônio Castro Alves wrote of the horrors of slavery, and the persecuted Indians were rescued through art by poets and novelists like Antônio Gonçalves Dias and José de Alencar. These trends combined in one of the most important accomplishments of the Romantic era in Brazil: the establishment of a Brazilian national identity based on Indian ancestry and the rich natural environment of the country.[11]
In music, the 19th century produced only two composers of outstanding talent: neoclassical sacred composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia, for a while music director to the court, and later, Romantic operistCarlos Gomes, the first Brazilian musician to win international acclaim.[12]
The beginning of the 20th century saw a struggle between old schools and modernist trends. The Week of Modern Art festival, held in São Paulo in 1922, was received with fiery criticism by conservative sectors of the society, but it was a landmark in the history of Brazilian art. It included plastic arts exhibitions, lectures, concerts, and the reading of poems. Due to the radicalism (for the times) of some of their poems and music, the artists were vigorously booed and pelted by the audience, and the press and art critics in general were strong in their condemnation. However, those artists are now seen as the founders of Modern art in Brazil. Modernist literature and theory of art were represented by Oswald de Andrade, Sérgio Milliet, Menotti del Picchia, and Mário de Andrade, whose revolutionary novel Macunaíma (1928) is one of the founding texts of Brazilian Modernism. Painting was represented by Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall, Vicente do Rego Monteiro; sculpture by Victor Brecheret; and music by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the leader of a new musical nationalism, among many others.[13]
The Week not only introduced to a wider public modern, experimental tendencies derived from European Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism, but also wanted to make use of national folklore as a basis for an art more relevant to the Brazilian reality, with an enhanced social awareness. This "cannibalization" of European movements and transformation into genuine Brazilian expression is the motto between the Anthropophagic Manifesto, published by Oswald de Andrade in 1928, that draws parallels between art history and the cannibal rituals of the Tupi people.
However, the radicalism of those first Modernists couldn't last for long in a society used to traditional fashions, and the original core members had separated by 1929, pursuing individual paths. What Brazilian art then became was a mix of some important achievements of the Moderns, meaning freedom from the strict academic agenda, with more conventional traits, giving birth in the following generation to a moderate Modernism, best exemplified by painter Cândido Portinari, who was something like the official painter of the Brazilian government in mid-century.[14]
Oscar Niemeyer: Copan Building
Within the group of Brazilian artists, Chico Niedzielski's artwork has been spread all over the country. His work is known to be inspired by Sacred Geometry, breaking the tendency to focus on Brazilian themes and searching for a more universal and atemporal form of Brazilian art. The erosion of radical Modernism in the visual arts in the early 20th century was not reflected in Brazilian literature. Clarice Lispector wrote existentialist novels and developed a highly personal style, filled with stream-of-consciousness and epiphanies. João Guimarães Rosa changed the face of Brazilian literature with his experimental language, and playwright Nelson Rodrigues dealt with crime, prejudice, passion, and sexual pathologies. In the 1950s, painting and sculpture regained strength through Abstractionism, and architecture began also to display advanced features, influenced by Le Corbusier. Its greatest achievement was the urban core of Brasília, designed by urbanist Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, now a World Heritage Site.[15]
1960s onwards: Contemporary Art
Around the 1960s, the so-called "modernist" art movements started giving way to most contemporary means of expression, such as appropriation, political art, Conceptual art and Pop. Right at the turn of the decade, some Brazilian Concrete artists began ditching the traditional "strictness" of concrete art in favor of a more phenomenological approach, exploring the relations between the art object and the viewer. Among the primary leaders of this Neo-Concrete movement were the poet Ferreira Gullar, and the visual artists Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Lygia Clark, this last one internationally cited as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.[16]
The Coup d'état of 1964 and subsequent restriction of civil rights and freedom of expression in Brazil is commonly marked as the shifting point, whence artists such as Cildo Meireles and Rubens Gerchman began creating explicitly political art.[17] Particularly after 1968, when the military government legalized torture, Brazilian art was marked by rather radical actions and happenings. The São Paulo Art Biennial, the second oldest art biennial in the world, opened up with most of its walls empty due to a boycott from the artists.[18] In 1970, the exhibit Do Corpo à Terra ("From Body to Earth") took place in Belo Horizonte, and included rather shocking actions such as Cildo Meireles setting live chickens on fire in front of a live audience[19] and Artur Barrio ditching blood-soaked packages in a river, giving off the impression that the people who disappeared under the military government had "reappeared" in this gruesome fashion.[20]
Holy week, Ouro Preto-MG, 2010. Chrome. Photo: Guy Veloso.
Brazilian Pop art didn't come without its share of criticism, sometimes adopting an outright rejection of consumer culture instead of the ambivalent, distant criticism of American pop. Waldemar Cordeiro is one of the most expressive artists that began exploring digital art and robotics in its work around the 60s and 70s, while Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara brought the aesthetics of comic books, playing cards and other popular forms of visuality into his work. Hélio Oiticica's "Tropicália", a colorful immersive installation piece, incorporated references to the slums of Rio de Janeiro. The title relates to the cultural movement of the same name, that called back to the Antropophagic Manifesto of the 1920s to offer a more tongue-in-cheek perspective on the myths of an exotic and "wild" Brazil.
Some artists as: Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Naza, Cildo Meireles among others, have been featured on the international stage. Brazilian contemporary art and photography are among the most creative in Latin America, growing an international prominence each year with exhibitions and publications. Brazilian contemporary photographers include Miguel Rio Branco, Vik Muniz, Sebastião Salgado, and Guy Veloso.[citation needed]
Indigenous Artists
The Pinacoteca de São Paulo museum has become the first museum in over 100 years to host a contemporary Indigenous art exhibition.[21] The exhibition is featured 23 Indigenous artists from various ethnicities across Brazil. The Véxoa exhibition showcases paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs and installations[22] all with the political goal of capturing and drawing attention to important issues currently affecting the Indigenous population, which come in the form of agribusiness, deforestation, illegal mining and climate change.[21]
The name of the Véxoa originates from the Terena language and translates to "We Know."[22] The exhibition aims to break stereotypes surrounding Indigenous communities in Brazil. The curator of the museum has chosen a variety of Indigenous works which are both contemporary and traditional. The museum includes a diversity policy but does not group indigenous group the artist by ethnicity or chronological in order to emphasize the universalism of shared experiences by the native communities as more than 300 Indigenous group currently reside in Brazil according to Olinda Yawar.[21] The exhibition include Indigenous film, photography, ceramics, embroidery and natural materials.[22]
Ailton Krenak a leading Indigenous artist and philosopher has talked about the exhibition as "an opportunity to expose the extremely adverse times that Indigenous people are experiencing as a result of political violence perpetrated against their rights by the Brazilian State."[21]
Jaider Esbell, another prominent artist in the exhibition, believes that, "Every exhibition of Indigenous art is primarily about exposing all the crimes that are taking place today".[21] The artist focuses in widening different perspectives of Indigenous culture in order to illustrate the daily struggle and violence against indigenous communities. In a recent YouTube video Jaider has commented on the importance of Indigenous art as an intrinsic part of Indigenous culture and values. Jaider acknowledges the destruction of the Amazon rainforest as destroying traditions and indigenous communities.[23] Jaider teaches a course at São Paulo's Museum of Modern Art.
Yakuña Tuxá an Indigenous female artist from Bahia has put forward multiple artworks that reflecting the challenges of being an Indigenous woman in modern-day Brazil. The art focuses on Indigenous beauty and the prejudices faced by Indigenous women in big cities.
Antônio Diogo da Silva Parreiras was a Brazilian painter, designer and illustrator.
Lasar Segall was a Lithuanian Jewish and Brazilian painter, engraver and sculptor. Segall's work is derived from impressionism, expressionism and modernism. His most significant themes were depictions of human suffering, war, persecution and prostitution.
Victor Meirelles de Lima was a Brazilian painter and teacher who is best known for his works relating to his nation's culture and history. From humble origins, his talent was soon recognized, being admitted as a student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He specialized in the genre of history painting, and upon winning the Academy's Foreign Travel Award, he spent several years training in Europe. There he painted his best-known work, Primeira Missa no Brasil. Returning to Brazil, he became one of emperor Pedro II's favorite painters, joining the monarch's patronage program and aligning himself with his proposal to renew the image of Brazil through the creation of visual symbols of its history.
Cildo Meireles is a Brazilian conceptual artist, installation artist and sculptor. He is noted especially for his installations, many of which express resistance to political oppression in Brazil. These works, often large and dense, encourage a phenomenological experience via the viewer's interaction.
The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes is a national art museum located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The museum, officially established in 1937 by the initiative of education minister Gustavo Capanema, was inaugurated in 1938 by President Getúlio Vargas. The museum collection, on the other hand, takes its rise in the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in the early 19th century, when King John VI brought along with him part of the Portuguese Royal Collection. This art collection stayed in Brazil after the King's return to Europe and became the core collection of the National School of Fine Arts. When the museum was created in 1937, it became the heir not only the National School collection, but also of its headquarters, a 1908 eclectic style building projected by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos.
Hélio Oiticica was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, painter, performance artist, and theorist best known for his participation in the Neo-Concrete Movement, for his innovative use of color, and for what he later termed "environmental art," which included Parangolés and Penetrables, like the famous Tropicália. Oiticica was also a filmmaker and writer.
Rubens Gerchman was a Brazilian painter and sculptor. He was heavily influenced by concrete and neoconcrete art.
Eliseu Visconti, born Eliseo d'Angelo Visconti, was an Italian-born Brazilian painter, cartoonist, and teacher. He is considered one of the very few impressionist painters of Brazil. He is considered the initiator of the art nouveau in Brazil.
The roots of Brazilian sculpture have been traced back to the late 16th century, emerging soon after the first settlements in the newly discovered land. Through the following century, most of the sculpture in Brazil was brought from Portugal and displayed Baroque features. The Baroque style would flourish within the religious culture of the country and would remain predominant until the first decades of the 19th century. In the 19th century, sculptural activity decreased, but it later revived when both the government and the public took a new interest in the art. Modernism fomented a period of intense research into a new language of sculpture, with great achievements, and the contemporary sculpture of Brazil enjoys worldwide respect.
The Imperial Academy of Fine Arts was an institution of higher learning in the arts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, established by King João VI. Despite facing many initial difficulties, the Academy was established and took its place at the forefront of Brazilian arts education in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Academy became the center of the diffusion of new aesthetic trends and the teaching of modern artistic techniques. It eventually became one of the principal arts institutions under the patronage of Emperor Dom Pedro II. With the Proclamation of the Republic, it became known as the National School of Fine Arts. It became extinct as an independent institution in 1931, when it was absorbed by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and became known as the UFRJ School of Fine Arts, which still operates today.
Arthur Timótheo da Costa was an Afro-Brazilian painter and designer.
Iole Antunes de Freitas is a Brazilian sculptor, engraver, and installation artist who works in the field of contemporary art. Freitas began her career in the 1970s, participating in a group of artists in Milan, Italy linked to Body art. She used photography. In the 1980s, she returned to Brazil, but abandoned the human body as mediator of her work, adopting the "sculpture body". The artist uses materials such as wire, canvas, steel, copper, stone, and water to create her works.
Maria Lynch Rio de Janeiro born 1981 is a Brazilian artist
Ivan Ferreira Serpa was a Brazilian painter, draftsman, printmaker, designer, and educator active in the concrete art movement. Much of his work was in geometric abstractionism. He founded Grupo Frente, which included fellow artists Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, and Franz Weissmann, among others, and was known for mentoring many artists in Brazil.
Vera Chaves Barcellos is a Brazilian artist and educator. She was featured in the Radical Women show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018.
Gioventù is a painting by the Brazilian painter and designer Eliseu Visconti, from 1898.
Jaider Esbell was a Brazilian writer, artist, art educator, curator, geographer, and indigenous rights activist.
Brazilian Romantic painting was the leading artistic expression in Brazil during the latter half of the 19th century, coinciding with the Second Reign. It represented a unique evolution of the Romantic movement; it diverged significantly from its European counterpart and even the parallel Romantic movement in Brazilian literature. Characterized by a palatial and restrained aesthetic, it incorporated a strong neoclassical influence and gradually integrated elements of Realism, Symbolism, and other schools, resulting in an eclectic synthesis that dominated the Brazilian art scene until the early 20th century.
Marcela Cantuária is a Brazilian visual artist working primarily with paintings. Cantuária's work revolves around contemporary historical paintings produced in small and large formats. Recurring themes in her work are social movements, political history, feminisms, and environmental causes in Latin America.
Francisco Domingos "Chico" da Silva was a Brazilian painter associated with naïve art and modernist Brazilian painting. Da Silva is considered one of the first Brazilian artists of indigenous heritage to achieve prominence in Brazil and abroad.
References
↑ Almanaque Abril 2007. São Paulo: Editora Abril, 2007, p. 234.
↑ Correa, Conceição Gentil. Estatuetas de cerâmica na cultura Santarém. Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, 1965.
↑ KARNAL, Leandro. Teatro da Fé: Formas de Representação Religiosa no Brasil e no México do Século XVI. São Paulo, Editora Hucitec, 1998. "Livro". Archived from the original on 2013-07-24. Retrieved 2010-10-25.
↑ MARIZ, Vasco. História da Música no Brasil: A música no tempo do Brasil Colônia. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2005. pp. 33-46
↑ CONDURU, Roberto. Araras Gregas. In: 19&20 - A revista eletrônica de DezenoveVinte. Volume III, n. 2, abril de 2008
↑ BISCARDI, Afrânio & ROCHA, Frederico Almeida. O Mecenato Artístico de D. Pedro II e o Projeto Imperial. In: 19&20 - A revista eletrônica de DezenoveVinte. Volume I, n. 1, maio de 2006
↑ CARDOSO, Rafael. A Academia Imperial de Belas Artes e o Ensino Técnico. In: 19&20 - A revista eletrônica de DezenoveVinte. Volume III, n. 1, janeiro de 2008
↑ FERNANDES, Cybele V. F. A construção simbólica da nação: A pintura e a escultura nas Exposições Gerais da Academia Imperial das Belas Artes. In: 19&20 - A revista eletrônica de DezenoveVinte. Volume II, n. 4, outubro de 2007
↑ O Indianismo como Projeto de Nacionalidade. Secretaria Municipal de Educação - Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro
↑ A Música na Corte de D. João VI e D. Pedro I; Antonio Carlos Gomes. In MARIZ, Vasco. História da Música no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2005.pp 52-61; 76-95
↑ Ramírez, Mari Carmen (2004). Inverted utopias: avant-garde art in Latin America. Olea, Héctor., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN0300102690. OCLC53099013.
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