Brazilian art - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

was colonized by Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

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

Pre-Columbian

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

Indian peoples, most likely produced various forms of art, but very little is known about this. Little remains, except from specific cultures like the Marajoara

MaraJoara

Marajoara may refer to:* Marajoara culture, a pre-Columbian society on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon river.* MaraJoara , an Australian designer swimwear label....

, who left sophisticated painted pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

. So, Brazilian art—in the context of Western Art—began in the late 16th century and, for the greater part of its evolution, depended wholly on European standards.

Pre-Columbian traditions

The oldest known art in Brazil is the cave painting

Cave painting

Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...

s in Serra da Capivara National Park

Serra da Capivara National Park

Serra da Capivara National Park is a national park in the north east of Brazil. It has many prehistoric paintings. The park was created to protect the prehistoric artifacts and paintings found there. It became a World Heritage Site in 1991. Its head archaeologist is Niède Guidon...

in the state of Piauí

Piauí

Piauí is one of the states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country.Piauí has the shortest coastline of any of the non-landlocked Brazilian states at 66 km , and the capital, Teresina, is the only state capital in the north east to be located inland...

, dating back to c. 13,000 BC. More recent examples have been found in Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...

and Goiás

Goiás

Goiás is a state of Brazil, located in the central part of the country. The name Goiás comes from the name of an indigenous community...

, showing geometric patterns and animal forms.

One of the most sophisticated kinds of Pre-Columbian artifact found in Brazil is the sophisticated Marajoara

MaraJoara

Marajoara may refer to:* Marajoara culture, a pre-Columbian society on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon river.* MaraJoara , an Australian designer swimwear label....

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 muiraquitã

Muiraquitã

Muiraquitã , is the name given to various types of old artefacts of Amazonian Indian origin, carved in stone or wood, and representing animals or people...

s, also belong to these cultures. The Mina and Periperi

Periperi

Periperi is a subdistrict north of Salvador, in the Brazilian State of Bahia.-Culture:For some, Periperi is viewed as the cultural core of the many suburbs surrounding Salvador. It is home to one of the largest venues in the Salvador area, the Sport Club of Periperi...

cultures, from Maranhão

Maranhão

Maranhão is a northeastern state of Brazil. To the north lies the Atlantic Ocean. Maranhão is neighbored by the states of Piauí, Tocantins and Pará. The people of Maranhão have a distinctive accent...

and Bahia

Bahia

Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...

, produced interesting though simpler pottery and statuettes.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the ancient Indian traditions of body painting

Body painting

Body painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting...

, pottery, cult statuettes, and feather art are still being cultivated by the remaining Indian peoples.

Baroque

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

José de Anchieta

José de Anchieta was a Canarian Jesuit missionary to Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's history in the 1st century after its discovery on April 22, 1500 by a Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, Anchieta was one of the founders of...

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

Pedro da Fonseca

Pedro da Fonseca was a Portuguese Cardinal, born in Olivença, then in Portugal, but since the 19th century annexed by Spain. He was made Cardinal by the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, with the title of "Santo Ângelo na Pescaria", in 1409....

started organizing the musical life of the infant colony. Basílio da Gama

Basílio da Gama

José Basílio da Gama was a Brazilian-born Portuguese poet and member of the Society of Jesus, famous for the epic poem O Uraguai...

and Gregório de Mattos

Gregório de Mattos

Gregório de Mattos e Guerra was the most famous Colonial Brazilian Baroque poet. Although he wrote many lyrical and religious poems, he was more well-known by his satirical ones, winning because of them the nickname "Boca do Inferno" .He is the patron of the 16th chair of the Brazilian Academy of...

were the first secular poets. All of them worked under the influence of the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

, the dominant style in Brazil until the early 19th century.

Through the 17th and 18th centuries Baroque art flourished with increasing richness and craftsmanship, mainly in Bahia

Bahia

and Pernambuco

Pernambuco

Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...

along the coast and in some inland regions, reaching the highest levels of originality in Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais

, where a gold rush

Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...

nurtured a rich and cultured local society. In Minas lived the greatest artists of Brazilian Baroque: painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

Manuel da Costa Ataíde

Manuel da Costa Ataíde , was a Brazilian painter, decorator, teacher and woodcarver. He is the greatest name of Brazilian Baroque painting...

and sculptor-architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

Aleijadinho

Aleijadinho was a Colonial Brazil-born sculptor and architect, noted for his works on and in various churches of Brazil....

. Minas was also the birthplace of a proto-Neoclassical

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

school of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

and literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, with composers Lobo de Mesquita and Francisco Gomes da Rocha, and poets Tomás Antônio Gonzaga

Tomás Antônio Gonzaga

Tomás Antônio Gonzaga was a Portuguese poet. One of the most famous Neoclassic Brazilian writers, he was also the ouvidor and the ombudsman of the city of Ouro Preto , as well as the desembargador of the appeal court in Bahia...

and Cláudio Manuel da Costa

Cláudio Manuel da Costa

Cláudio Manuel da Costa was a Brazilian poet and musician, considered to be the introducer of the Neoclassicism in Brazil...

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

Missão Artística Francesa

The French Artistic Mission in Brazil was composed by a group of French artists and architects that came to Rio de Janeiro, then the capital city of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves in March 1816, under the auspices of the royal court of Portugal, which was exiled in Brazil...

in 1816, which strongly reinforced the Neoclassical style, previously seen in Brazil only in timid attempts. Joachim Lebreton

Joachim Lebreton

Joachim Lebreton was a French professor, public administrator and legislator.- Biography :Lebreton began his career as professor of Rhetoric at the Collège de Tulle....

, 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

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

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 emergence of the first generation of Romantic painters. Victor Meirelles

Victor Meirelles

Victor Meirelles de Lima was a 19th century painter. He studied art in Paris but painted most of his works in and about his native Brazil. His religious and military paintings helped him become one of the most popular and celebrated Brazilian painters...

and Pedro Américo

Pedro Américo

Pedro Américo de Figueiredo e Melo was one of the most important academic painters of Brazil. He was also a writer and a teacher....

, 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.

Meanwhile, literature too evolved towards a romantic-nationalist school with the works of Casimiro de Abreu

Casimiro de Abreu

Casimiro José Marques de Abreu was a Brazilian poet, novelist and playwright, adept of the "Ultra-Romanticism" movement...

and Manuel Antônio de Almeida

Manuel Antônio de Almeida

Manuel Antônio de Almeida was a Brazilian writer, medician and teacher. He is famous for the book Memoirs of a Police Sergeant, written under the pen name Um Brasileiro...

. Around 1850, a transition began, centered upon Álvares de Azevedo

Álvares de Azevedo

Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo was a Brazilian Romantic poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist...

, 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

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

, and the persecuted Indians were rescued through art by poets and novelists like Antônio Gonçalves Dias

Antônio Gonçalves Dias

Antônio Gonçalves Dias was a Brazilian Romantic poet, playwright and linguist. He is famous for writing the poem "Canção do exílio", arguably the most well-known poem of the Brazilian literature, and many other nationalist and patriotic poems that would later give him the title of national poet of...

and José de Alencar

José de Alencar

José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...

. 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.

In music, the 19th century produced only two composers of outstanding talent: neoclassical sacred composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia

José Maurício Nunes Garcia

José Maurício Nunes Garcia was a Brazilian classical composer, one of the greatest exponents of Classicism in the Americas....

, for a while music director

Music director

A music director may be the director of an orchestra, the director of music for a film, the director of music at a radio station, the head of the music department in a school, the co-ordinator of the musical ensembles in a university or college , the head bandmaster of a military band, the head...

to the court, and later, Romantic operist

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

Carlos Gomes

Antônio Carlos Gomes

Antônio Carlos Gomes was the first New World composer whose work was accepted by Europe.-Life:He was born in Campinas, Brazil, son of Maestro Manuel José Gomes and Fabiana Maria Jaguari Cardoso....

, the first Brazilian musician to win international acclaim.

In the late 19th century, Brazilian art became acquainted with Realism

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

. Descriptions of nature and of the people of Brazil's varied regions as well as psychological romances proliferated with João Simões Lopes Neto

João Simões Lopes Neto

João Simões Lopes Neto was a Brazilian regionalist writer of Rio Grande Do Sul born March 9, 1865. After some unsuccessful business ventures he married at 27. He only wrote four works of note, but nevertheless had a strong importance to Brazilian regionalist writing...

, Aluísio Azevedo

Aluísio Azevedo

Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo was a Brazilian novelist, caricaturist, diplomat, playwright and short story writer. Initially a Romantic writer, he would later adhere to the Naturalist movement...

, Euclides da Cunha

Euclides da Cunha

Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões , a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos...

, and, above all, Machado de Assis, while Almeida Junior, Pedro Weingärtner

Pedro Weingärtner

Pedro Weingärtner was an important Academic painter of Brazil, and the first artist born in Rio Grande do Sul to win international praise for his work....

, 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

Week of Modern Art

The Modern Art Week was an arts festival in São Paulo, Brazil, that ran from February 11 to February 18, 1922...

festival, held in São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

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

Oswald de Andrade

José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....

, Sérgio Milliet

Sérgio Milliet

Sérgio Milliet da Costa e Silva, generally known as Sérgio Milliet was a Brazilian writer, painter, poet,essayist, literary and art critic, and sociologist.-External links:* in...

, Menotti del Picchia

Menotti Del Picchia

Paulo Menotti Del Picchia was a Brazilian poet, journalist, and painter. He is associated with the Generation of 1922, the first generation of Brazilian modernists....

, and Mário de Andrade

Mário de Andrade

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...

, whose revolutionary novel Macunaíma
Macunaíma (novel)
Macunaíma is a 1928 novel by Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade. It is one of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism.The novel follows a young man, Macunaíma, "a hero without a character," born in the Brazilian jungle and possessing strange and remarkable abilities , as he travels to São Paulo...

(1928) is one of the founding texts of Brazilian Modernism. Painting was represented by Anita Malfatti

Anita Malfatti

Anita Catarina Malfatti is heralded as the first Brazilian artist to introduce European and American forms of Modernism to Brazil...

, Tarsila do Amaral

Tarsila do Amaral

Tarsila do Amaral, , known simply as Tarsila, is considered to be one of the leading Latin American modernist artists, described as "the Brazilian painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style." She was a member of the Grupo dos Cinco , which...

, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti

Emiliano Di Cavalcanti

Emiliano Augusto Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Melo , known as Di Cavalcanti, was a Brazilian painter who sought to produce a form of Brazilian art free of any noticeable European influences...

, Vicente do Rego Monteiro

Vicente do Rego Monteiro

Vicente do Rego Monteiro , born in Recife, in a family of artists, was a Brazilian painter.Already in 1911 Vicente do Rego Monteiro was in Paris , attending a course, for little time, at the Académie Julian. Precocious talent, in 1913 he participated of the Hall of the Independent Artists, in the...

; sculpture by Victor Brecheret

Victor Brecheret

Victor Brecheret was an Italian-Brazilian sculptor. He lived most of his life in São Paulo, except for his studies in Paris in his early twenties...

; and music by Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...

, the leader of a new musical nationalism, among many others.

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

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

, and Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, but also wanted to make use of national folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

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 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

Cândido Portinari

Candido Portinari was one of the most important Brazilian painters and also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting....

, who was something like the official painter of the Brazilian government in mid-century.

The erosion of radical Modernism in the visual arts in the early 20th century was not reflected in Brazilian literature. Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...

wrote existentialist

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

novels and developed a highly personal style, filled with stream-of-consciousness and epiphanies. João Guimarães Rosa

João Guimarães Rosa

João Guimarães Rosa was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas...

changed the face of Brazilian literature with his experimental language, and playwright Nelson Rodrigues

Nélson Rodrigues

Nelson Falcão Rodrigues was a Brazilian playwright, journalist and novelist. In 1943, he helped usher in a new era in Brazilian theater with his play Vestido de Noiva , considered revolutionary for the complex exploration of its characters' psychology and its use of colloquial dialog...

dealt with crime, prejudice, passion, and sexual pathologies. In the 1950s, painting and sculpture regained strength through Abstractionism

Abstractionism

See also Abstract artAbstractionism is the theory that the mind obtains some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from experience. One may, for example, abstract 'green' from a set of experiences which involve green along with other properties...

, and architecture began also to display advanced features, influenced by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

. Its greatest achievement was the urban core of Brasília

Brasília

Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...

, designed by urbanist Lúcio Costa

Lúcio Costa

Lucio Costa was a Brazilian architect and urban planner.-Career:Costa was born in Toulon, France.Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and in Montreux until 1916, he graduated as an architect in 1924 from the School of Fine Art in Rio de Janeiro...

and architect Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...

, now a World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

. Contemporary art in Brazil evolved from Modernism and assimilated later trends, focusing mainly in the early 21st century on city life and all its aspects and displaying a huge diversity of styles in tune with the growing internationalistic tendencies.