‘Brazil! Brazil!’ reveals a vibrant vision of Modernism

Bern. The exhibition Brazil! Brazil!: The Birth of Modernism (Brazil! Brazil!: The Birth of Modernism0, Opened at the Zentrum Paul Klee, the exhibition offers a vibrant view of this artistic movement in the South American country through the work of 10 artists, five of them self-taught and little known internationally. Several of the 130 works on display have left Brazil for the first time. The exhibition coincides thematically with the Venice Biennale, in which more than half of the artists present here are also participating.

Brazilian Modernism is situated within the growing European interest in art from the global south, highlighting the production of artists detached from traditional Western aesthetics. The exhibition is co-organized with the Royal Academy of Arts (RAA) in London, where it will be exhibited from January to April 2025. Curiously, the exhibition was presented at this same venue in 1944 Modern Brazilian Paintings, in support of the Allies during World War II, after having been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The exhibition was organized by Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Roberta Saraiva Coutinho and Adrian Locke, the latter being chief curator of the London museum, who has also analyzed Mexican Modernism in the exhibition A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 (2013) and in Aztecs (2002).

The first group includes the classics Modernisme, artists of bourgeois origin, such as Tarsila do Amaral, Candido Portinari, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Geraldo de Barros, all trained in Paris, while Anita Malfatti and the Lithuanian Lasar Segall, in Berlin. They integrated the Brazilian avant-garde into the international context, but at the same time began to search for a national artistic identity.

The second group includes self-taught artists or artists with careers that are difficult to pigeonhole, such as the sophisticated Flávio de Carvalho, as well as Alfredo Volpi, Djanira da Motta e Silva and Rubem Valentim. These artists, who were not accepted into the canon of Brazilian Modernism until recently, present a more popular perspective that is closer to the country’s cultural roots, combining indigenous, African and colonial elements.

The exhibition highlights the importance of the Modern Art Week of 1922, the founding event for modernism in Brazil, held at the Teatro Municipal in São Paulo. Sponsored by Paulo Prado, the Week brought together writers, painters and musicians who sought an authentically Brazilian art, in dialogue with the European avant-garde, but not dependent on it. São Paulo, with its thriving coffee industry, then established itself as the cultural and financial epicentre of Brazil. The city, which had only the Pinacoteca do Estado (inaugurated in 1905), soon became a cultural centre with museums and galleries, and would host the famous São Paulo Biennial.

He Cannibal Manifesto from 1928, written by Oswald de Andrade and inspired by the work Abaporu by Tarsila do Amaral, also played a fundamental role in this movement. This text proposed devour European culture to transform it, paving the way towards a more indigenous aesthetic.

Despite the enthusiasm for Modernism, recent studies point to a contradiction in the work of artists such as Tarsila and others. The daughter of coffee plantation owners, her paintings depicted an idealized vision of exploited workers, which, according to the curators, reflects a reality seen from the perspective of the other.

A crucial change in Brazil occurred with the Revolution of 1930, which put an end to the coffee and cattle-raising oligarchy of coffee with milk. With the arrival of Getúlio Vargas, reforms in favor of workers were implemented, which promoted the industrialization of the country. This social and political context influenced the work of many artists of the time. Tarsila, for example, went from painting rural and urban landscapes to depicting scenes from the industrial world, as in Second class (1933). Portinari also focused on themes such as poverty and exploitation in his work. Coffee worker (1934).

The self-taught artists also reflected these changes in their works. Djanira da Motta e Silva, of indigenous origin, mixed the popular and the erudite, achieving an aesthetic balance through geometric shapes and saturated colours, as well as the use of white, which stands out for its beauty and originality. Alfredo Volpi, an Italian migrant, captured the facades of villages and the banners of popular festivals, while Rubem Valentim incorporated symbols of candomblé into his works.

This period was followed by the construction of Brasilia and the architectural innovations of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, which laid the groundwork for Concrete art and Tropicalism of the 1960s, a movement that fused popular and scholarly culture, affecting different disciplines from music to architecture.

The exhibition, which will be open until January 5, 2025, and its catalogue, also address contemporary issues, such as the centrality of women artists in Brazilian Modernism and racial aspects, among others. As a whole, Brazil! Brazil! reveals a rich fusion of local and global influences, showing how Brazilian art evolved in response to the country’s social and political tensions, and offering audiences a visual feast of great art shaped by symbolism, color and transformative creativity.