Brasil! Brasil! Aufbruch in die Moderne

Brasil! - a modern visual language of its own

During a visit to the new capital Brasília in 1961, the philosopher Max Bense (who taught at the Ulm School of Design from 1953 to 1958) saw the modern buildings by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer in 1961 as a manifestation of the bulwark of a western, and in particular rationalist, enlightenment. He raved about the idea of this city, which he saw as a powerful storehouse of technical and artistic intelligence, analogous to a Gesamtkunstwerk, which did not appear by chance but as a necessary representation of synthetic forces in a prospective space of civilisation. This set the scene for a modern Brazil from a European perspective, especially 16 years after the horrors of the Second World War. However, it had to remain as much a pipe dream as the self-image of a socially just and multi-ethnic Brazil has remained. The Semana de Arte Moderna 1922 (Week of Modern Art) is seen as an attempt to realise this utopia of Brazilian modernism, in which the first generation of artists associated with the names Anita Malfatti (1889-1964) and Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899-1970) manifested themselves. The genuinely Brazilian aspect of this modernity, as demanded by the writer Oswald de Andrade, was to become the role of "national identity". In a manifesto, he called for the incorporation of foreign European culture, to "digest" it and to create a Brazilian art of its own by transforming it. For him, this also included the "devouring" of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures. The first two artists and other protagonists, such as Lasar Segall (1891-1957) and Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973), are today recognised as having a certain social distance to indigenous visual language and Afro-Brazilian rituals, which was only overcome by a second generation around Djanira da Motta e Silva (1914-1979) and Rubem Valentim (1922-1991). Now all these artists and their works are causing quite a stir in an exhibition such as "Foreigners Everywhere" at the 60th Venice Biennale (curated by Adriano Pedrosa), because a completely unique visual language is coming to the fore here, after the formalist conquest by European modernism had been "digested", so to speak. And just as a strong international interest has been visible for some time under the heading of global modernism, scientific parallels to the issues of European modernism are no less addressed than the political, social and cultural differences. "Brasil! Brasil! - Awakening to Modernity" now shows in the exhibition and with this comprehensive publication the various ways in which Brazilian artists have developed their own modern visual language and, through the presentation of ten positions, simultaneously provides an introduction to formative political, social and economic circumstances; at the same time, the most important stages in literature, music, design and architecture are thematically addressed. The Zentrum Paul Klee 2019 exhibition "Paul Klee - Unstable Balance", curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer, provided an initial starting point for a fruitful intercultural exchange, which was received with great interest by the Brazilian public on its tour from Saõ Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte.

Artists:
Anita Malfatti, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Tarsila do Amaral, Candido Portinari, Lasar Segall, Flávio de Carvalho, Alfredo Volpi, Djanira da Motta e Silva, Geraldo Barros, Rubem Valentim

Exhibitions:
Paul Klee Centre Bern, 7/9/2024 - 5/1/2025
Royal Academy of Arts London, 28/1 - 21/4/2025