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 Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung from 1953 to 1958) saw in the modern buildings of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer the bulwark of a Western, and above all a rationalist, Enlightenment made manifest. He was enthusiastic about the idea of this city, which, analogous to a total work of art, he saw as a mighty repository of technical and artistic intelligence, one that appeared not by chance but as a necessary representation of synthetic forces in a prospective space of civilization. With that, the marker for a modern Brazil had been set from an European point of view, and this only sixteen years after the horrors of the Second World War. Yet it was bound to remain as much a wishful image as the self-image of a socially just and multi-ethnic Brazil has remained. One run-up to this utopia of a Brazilian modernism is seen in the “Semana de Arte Moderna” of 1922 (Modern Art Week), in which a first generation of artists made itself manifest, associated with the names of Anita Malfatti (1889–1964) or Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899–1970). The genuinely Brazilian character of this modernism, as the writer Oswald de Andrade demanded, was to take on the role of “national identity.” In a manifesto he called for the foreign European culture to be devoured, to be “digested,” and for a Brazilian art of its own to be created through its transformation. For him this also included the “swallowing” of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures. The two artists first mentioned and other protagonists, such as Lasar Segall (1891–1957) or Tarsila do Amaral (1886–1973), are today credited with a certain social distance from indigenous visual language and from Afro-Brazilian rituals, a distance that was overcome only by a further, second generation around Djanira da Motta e Silva (1914–1979) or Rubem Valentim (1922–1991). All these artists and their works caused a considerable stir in an exhibition such as “Foreigners Everywhere” at the 60th Biennale in Venice (curated by Adriano Pedrosa), because here a wholly distinctive visual language comes into play, after the formalist conquest by European modernism had, as it were, been “digested.” And just as a strong international interest has for some time been apparent under the heading of Global Modernism, scholarly parallels to the questions of European modernism are addressed no less than the political, social and cultural differences. In this extensive publication, “Brasil! Brasil! – Aufbruch in die Moderne”, the various ways in which Brazilian artists developed their own modern visual language is visible; through the presentation of ten positions it also permits an introduction to the formative political, social and economic circumstances, while at the same time touching thematically on the most important stages in literature, music, design, and architecture. A first point of contact for a fruitful intercultural exchange presented itself by the Zentrum Paul Klee in 2019 with the exhibition “Paul Klee – Unstable Balance”, curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer, which on its tour from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro and to Belo Horizonte was received with great interest by the Brazilian public.

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