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Chapter 11
Art, Literature
and Poetry
Brazil was colonized by Portugal 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
Indigenous peoples, 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, Brazilian
art - 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 painting
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The oldest known art in Brazil is the cave
paintings 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
Minas Gerais and Goiás, showing geometric
patterns and animal forms.
One of the most sophisticated kinds of PreColumbian 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. 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
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, 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 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
Baroque, 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 Pernambuco
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
Aleijadinho. 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: Neoclassicism,
Romanticism, Realism
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
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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. 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, São Paulo.
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
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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
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 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, Rio de Janeiro.
sacred composer
José Maurício
Nunes Garcia, for a
while music director
to the court, and
later, Romantic
opera composer
Carlos Gomes, the
first Brazilian
musician to win
international
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, Euclides da Cunha, and, above
all, Machado de Assis, while Almeida Junior,
Pedro Weingärtner, 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 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
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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,
Vicente do Rego Monteiro; sculpture by Victor
Brecheret; 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 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. 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
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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 Brazilian literature. Clarice
Lispector wrote existentialist novels and
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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. Three Brazilian artists Maria
Martins, Bruno Giorgi and Alfredo Ceschiatti
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:
Hanging
Angels,
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 Vik
Muniz, Cildo Meirelles,Tunga, Adriana Varejao
and Beatriz Milhazes, 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
beauty. The landscaping was originally inspired
by famed architect and landscape artist
Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994), and rare
plant species are
distributed in an
esthetically
pl eas i ng manner
throughout an
estate which also
sports five lakes
and a preserved
forest area.
Vik Muniz
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Beatriz Milhazes
Inhotim Institute
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Books and reading in Brazil
Brazilians are also becoming more and more
avid readers. The number of books Brazilians
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 culture of Brazil 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
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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 Porto Alegre.
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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
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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 United
States, but these tend to be the wealthier
households. Most homes have electricity and
access to a television, 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
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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, Iracema, 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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