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Home , Alfredo Ceschiatti, Anita Malfatti, Beatriz Milhazes, Brazilian art, Brazilian painting, Culture of Brazil

Chapter 11 Art, Literature and Poetry

Brazil was colonized by in the middle of the 16th century. In those early times, owing to the primitive state of Portuguese civilization there, not much could be done in regard to art expression. The original inhabitants of the land, pre-Columbian , most likely produced various forms of art, but very little is known about this. Little remains, except from elaborate feather items used as body adornments by all different tribes and specific cultures like the Marajoara, who left sophisticated painted pottery. So, - in the Western sense of art - began in the late 16th century and, for the greater part of its evolution until early 20th century, depended wholly on European standards.

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Pre-Columbian traditions Main article: Indigenous peoples in Brazil

Santarém culture. Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi

Bororo Indian with feather headdress and body

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The oldest known art in Brazil is the cave in Serra da Capivara National Park in the state of Piauí, dating back to c. 13,000 BC. More recent examples have been found in and Goiás, showing geometric patterns and animal forms.

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 and animal reliefs. Statuettes and cult objects, such as the small carved-stone amulets called muiraquitãs, also belong to these cultures. The Mina and Periperi cultures, from Maranhão and , 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 indigenous peoples.

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Baroque The first Western artists active in Brazil were Roman Catholic priests who came from Portugal to “civilize” the indigenous population. 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, , statuary, and painting. José de Anchieta was the first important playwright; Agostinho de Jesus and Agostinho da Piedade produced the first known ; Belchior Paulo, João Felipe 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 , the dominant style in Brazil until the early 19th century.

Aleijadinho: Angel of the Passion, ca. 1799. Congonhas do Campo, Minas Gerais.

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Through the 17th and 18th centuries Baroque art flourished with increasing richness and craftsmanship, mainly in Bahia and along the coast and in some inland regions, reaching the highest levels of originality in Minas Gerais, where a gold rush nurtured a rich and cultured local society. In Minas lived the greatest artists of Brazilian Baroque: painter Manuel da Costa Ataíde and sculptor-architect . Minas was also the birthplace of a proto-Neoclassical school of music and literature, with composers Lobo de Mesquita and Francisco Gomes da Rocha, and poets Tomás Antônio Gonzaga and Cláudio Manuel da Costa.

19th century: , , One single event in the 19th century sowed the seeds for a complete renewal in Brazilian : 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

174 BRAZIL 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 , , , graphic arts, and crafts. A few decades later, under the personal patronage of Emperor Peter II, who was engaged in an ambitious national project of modernization, the Academy reached its golden age, fostering the

Pedro Américo: Independence or Death!, 1888. Paulista Museum, . 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, , violence, or interest in 175 BRAZIL death and the bizarre commonly seen in the European version, and because of its academic and palatial nature all excesses were eschewed.

Meanwhile, literature too evolved towards a romantic-nationalist school with the works of and Manuel Antônio de Almeida. Around 1850, a transition began, centered upon Álvares de Azevedo, who was influenced by the poetry of . 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 wrote of the horrors of , 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 the indigenous peoples ancestry and the rich natural environment of the country.

In music, the 19th century produced only two composers of outstanding talent: neoclassical

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Nicola Facchinetti: Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, 1884. National Museum of Fine Arts, .

sacred composer J o s é M a u r í c i o Nunes Garcia, for a while music director to the court, and later, Romantic opera composer Carlos Gomes, the f i r s t B r a z i l i a n musician to win i n t e r n a t i o n a l acclaim.

Almeida Junior: The Brazilian Tree Cutter, 1875. National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro.

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In the late 19th century, Brazilian art became acquainted with Realism. Descriptions of nature and of the people of Brazil's varied regions as well as psychological romances proliferated with João Simões Lopes Neto, Aluísio Azevedo, , and, above all, , while Almeida Junior, , Oscar Pereira da Silva, and other Realist painters depicted folk types and the distinctive colors and light of Brazilian landscape.

20th century: Modern and Contemporary The beginning of the 20th century saw a struggle between old schools and modernist trends. The Week of Modern Art , 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

178 BRAZIL founders of Modern art in Brazil. Modernist literature and theory of art were represented by , Sérgio Milliet, , and Mário de Andrade, whose revolutionary novel Macunaíma (1928) is one of the founding texts of Brazilian . Painting was represented by , , , ; sculpture by ; and music by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the leader of a new musical nationalism, among many others.

Tarsila do Amaral: Antropofagy, 1928. São Paulo Art Museum “Pinacoteca” (José Nemirowsky Collection).

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Emiliano Di Cavalcanti: Five Girls of Guaratinguetá, 1930. Modern Art Museum, São Paulo.

The Week not only introduced to a wider public modern, experimental tendencies derived from European , , and , 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. 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

180 BRAZIL 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.

Cândido Portinari: War, of War and Peace murals, 1952-56. United Nations Headquarters, New York, USA.

The erosion of radical Modernism in the visual arts in the early 20th century was not reflected in . wrote existentialist novels and

181 BRAZIL 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 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 . Its greatest achievement was the urban core of Brasília, designed by urbanist Lúcio Costa and architect , now a World Heritage Site. Three Brazilian artists Maria Martins, Bruno Giorgi and have made important sculptures for Brasilia.

Oscar Niemeyer: Brasília Cathedral. The statues are works b y A l f r e d o Ceschiatti Alfredo Ceschiatti: H a n g i n g A n g e l s , 1970. Interior of the Brasília Cathedral.

Contemporary art in Brazil evolved from

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Modernism and is growing worldwide reputation. Some Brazilian artists, such as , Cildo Meirelles,Tunga, Adriana Varejao and , have had major acclaimed international exhibitions. Many public spaces and museums have recently opened in Brazil to display contemporary art. The most important of these museums is Inhotim Institute, in Minas Gerais. Inhotim is a unique site that offers a broad ensemble of art works, displayed outdoors as well as in both temporary and permanent galleries, all located inside a Botanical Garden of extraordinary . The landscaping was originally inspired by famed architect and landscape artist (1909-1994), and rare plant species are distributed in an e s t h e t i c a l l y pleasing manner t h r o u g h o u t a n estate which also sports five lakes and a preserved forest area.

Vik Muniz

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Beatriz Milhazes

Inhotim Institute

184 BRAZIL Books and reading in Brazil

Brazilians are also becoming more and more avid readers. The number of books read a year has almost tripled in the last ten years, getting to 5 books a year. The growth of literature in Brazil is also being helped by the growth of internet, since more new authors are being able to show their work to the public. For these reasons, Brazil has one of the largest editorial markets of the world, produces around 500 million books every year and earning more than US$ 2 billion with their sales.

Why is Brazilian culture so diverse? The is well known for its diversity – this means there are lots of different aspects to it. The reason Brazilian culture is so rich is due to the wide range of influences that have contributed to it. The biggest of these influences is from Portugal because Brazil used to be part of the Portuguese Empire. Brazil has a legal system that is similar to that in Portugal and many building styles have been borrowed from that

185 BRAZIL European country. And, of course, the official language of Brazil is Portuguese.

Where are most of the houses in Brazil? We now know that Brazil has roughly three times more people than the United Kingdom. Brazil is also around 35 times larger than the United Kingdom, so even though it has more people there is also a lot more space for them to live in. If all the people in the United Kingdom and Brazil stood at an equal distance from each other, the people in Brazil would have 12 times more space around them. In reality, of course, the people of Brazil aren't spaced out evenly across the country. Just like in other countries, some parts are extremely crowded, or densely populated, and others are very sparsely populated.

The map on the next page shows the distribution of Brazil's population. It shows that the areas with a high population are around towns and cities, for example Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Salvador and .

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More than 80% of Brazilians live in urban areas.

The map also tells us that many of the large towns and cities in Brazil are found along the coast – originally these were good places to settle for fishing, transport and trade, and people continue to live there. The largest concentration of population is around São Paulo, and as you head inland the population becomes less and less dense – or less crowded. In fact, some places in Brazil's interior have

187 BRAZIL hardly any people at all. This is because the natural environment is hard to live in (see Chapter 3). People who live here are native inhabitants and people who have moved in to farm and mine. Where Brazilians live affects their access to services. If you live in a Brazilian city you have a 92% chance of having a water supply piped directly to your house. But the story is very different for people living in rural areas, where nearly 80% of people have to get their water from a well.

Some of the houses in Brazil are as well equipped as those in Europe and the , but these tend to be the wealthier households. Most homes have electricity and access to a , but computers and washing machines are still not widespread.

Low-income families have recently been able to get credit (or loans) to buy some of these consumer items but some prefer to save up the total amount before they buy because this is what they have always done.

Other countries have also contributed to the

188 BRAZIL rich Brazilian culture. Native South American people have valuable and well-established traditions. Even today it is common for people to give their children traditional names such as Iara, , Moema, Janaína, Araci, Jandira, Jaci or Ubirajara. There have also been many Italian, German, Japanese and Lebanese people who have moved to Brazil, bringing with them their own culture. When you also consider the Africans who have arrived in Brazil – many brought as slaves between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries - and migrants from North America you get a picture of the different roots today's Brazilians have. This is why Brazilian culture is known as a “melting pot.” It's as if all the different cultures have been melted down and moulded into a brand new one.

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