Brasil

Co-curators: Annateresa Fabris (Historian and art critic) Carlos A. Ferreira Martins (Architect. Lecturer on History of Modern Architecture. Department of Architecture and Town Planning, University of São Paulo) Jean-Claude Bernardet (Screenplay writer and film critic) José Miguel Wisnik (Musician. Lecturer on Brazilian Literature, University of São Paulo) Carlos Augusto Calil (Lecturer on Cinema, School of Communication and Art, University of São Paulo) Co-ordination in Brazil: Ana Helena Curti (ARTE3). Exhibition design: Pedro Mendes Da Rocha (ARTE3). Sponsored by: BANCAJA With the collaboration of: Instituto Valenciano de la Cinematografía Ricardo Muñoz Suay Instituto Valenciano de la Música This is the first international exhibition to concentrate specifically on the period known as “historical modernity”–the most experimental phase of the historic avant-gardes–and its influence on the arts in Brazil up to the end of the fifties. The starting-point for the exhibition is the Brazilian Modernist movement in the twenties, also known as the “Semana de 22”. The exhibition coincides with the Fifth Centenary of the discovery of Brazil. It is of a multidisciplinary nature, featuring altogether over 600 pieces in the various sections devoted to the plastic arts, books, magazines, photography, music, architecture, films and the presence of foreign artists, writers and intellectuals in Brazil. The catalogue published to accompany the exhibition is illustrated with reproductions of the works exhibited and constitutes a kind of project memorandum and reference manual, with specific chapters for each of the sections treated and essays by the curators of the various areas, together with a text by Eduardo Subirats and an anthology of historical and critical documents. The catalogue is accompanied by a compact disc with original vintage recordings of the Brazilian composers featured in the exhibition. Among the activities organised in parallel with the exhibition there is a series of Brazilian films which will be shown at the Valencia Provincial Council Film Theatre, and also sessions of music and an educational workshop. One of the basic features of the project is its multidisciplinary nature, which embraces practically all facets of Brazilian creativity in the first half of the twentieth century: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, films, tapestries, music, literature, illustration, magazines, manuscripts and manifestos. One of the greatest challenges for this exhibition is the attempt to amalgamate the different sectors that it comprises–despite their inherent divergences–in such a way as to project an image of the Brazilian modern movement as a unified impulse, providing an overall view of a definitive tendency rather than fragmentary items displayed in different rooms. The visit to the exhibition begins with Pre-Modernism, continuing with the avant-garde activities of the twenties which represent the movement that brought about the greatest transformation in the artistic and literary culture of Brazil. Nowhere else in Latin America did the avant-gardes of the twenties maintain their position for almost eight decades, as happened in Brazil, where they influenced all sectors of the country’s cultural life. This is followed by “Antropofagia” (Cannibalism), a cultural theory which appeared in the twenties on the initiative of Oswald de Andrade and Tarsila do Amaral, as a metaphor capable of unifying different trends and resolving the tensions that came from the colonial legacy. An outstanding part was played by Vicente do Rego Monteiro, whose drawing Antropófago (Cannibal), made in 1921 on the basis of his research into the indigenous art of Marajó, showed an Indian savouring a thighbone. This first example is accompanied by the emblematic work of the period, Tarsila do Amaral’s oil-painting Abaporu (a Tupi word meaning “the man who eats”), and Oswald de Andrade’s “Manifesto Antropófago”. This section also includes Hans Staden’s autobiographic account of his captivity among the Tupi Indians and Montaigne’s philosophical reflection Des Cannibales, and it is completed by Mário de Andrade’s literary interpretation of cannibalism in his novel Macunaíma (1928) and his photographs of the North-East of Brazil published in O Turista Aprendiz, together with Raul Bopp’s book of poems Cobra Norato. The visual arts section curated by Annateresa Fabris continues with the thirties, forties and fifties, with work by artists such as Anita Malfatti, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Lasar Segall, Emiliano di Cavalcanti, Ismael Nery, Victor Brecheret, Cândido Portinari and Maria Martins. It also includes Cícero Dias’s large-scale mural Eu vi o mundo… ele começava no Recife (I saw the world … it started in Recife), a key piece of the Brazilian avant-garde in the twenties, now exhibited in Spain for the first time, and Tarsila do Amaral’s A Caipirinha (Woman from the Interior), a key piece of the Pau-Brasil stage which preceded Antropofagia. It concludes with the work produced prior to Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica in the fifties and the start of Concretism and the construction of Brasília, with works of architecture and town planning selected by Carlos Martins, including various designs by Warchavchik, Le Corbusier, Burle Marx, Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, among others. The architectural designs that were finalists for the construction of Brasília will be shown here for the first time. This section is completed by two photographic series by Kidder Smith, Brazil Builds, and a selection from the Sartoris Archive. The photography section, curated by Jorge Schwartz, presents various series of photographs which include work by Marcel Gautherot (who was also the official photographer for Burle Marx) which is not yet well-known in Brazil, photomontages by Jorge de Lima and photographs by José Medeiros, Hildegard Rosenthal, Pierre Verger, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Geraldo de Barros. Another section, also curated by Jorge Schwartz, presents the publications connected with the Brazilian avant-garde movements, with work by Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira and copies of magazines from the period, including Revista de Antropofagia, Arco & Flexa, Estética, Festa, Klaxon, Movimento Brasileiro and Verde. The music section, curated by José Miguel Wisnik, covers three basic areas: the work of the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Darius Milhaud, and the origins of urban popular music (Ernesto Nazareth), culminating with the creation of the bossa nova and the song “Tropicália”, the symbol of Tropicalismo, and finally the contribution of Mário de Andrade and the nationalist composers. Also represented is the Valencian Tomás Terán, a great performer of the work of Villa-Lobos and himself a composer, who lived in Rio de Janeiro for nearly forty years. There will be Brazilian music in the ten rooms of the exhibition, and there will also be a series of concerts of Brazilian music in the IVAM’s Centre del Carme in November. The section of foreign presences, curated by Carlos Augusto Machado Calil, includes intellectuals, writers and artists of various nationalities who produced part of their work in Brazil, such as Blaise Cendrars, Le Corbusier, Lévi-Strauss, Paul Claudel, Orson Welles, Elizabeth Bishop, Alfonso Reyes, Marinetti and Ungaretti, among others. Brazilian cinema is shown in two sections. One, curated by Jean-Claude Bernardet, is contained within the exhibition and ranges from the beginnings of Brazilian film-making to work produced in the period before Cinema Novo, for which a variety of documentation is provided. The other part consists of showings of a series of Brazilian films at the Film Theatre in Valencia, including titles such as Carnaval Atlântida, São Paulo Sinfonia da Metrópole and Rio, 40 graus, together with film classics of “Cannibal” cinema–although chronologically subsequent to the Antropofagia movement–such as Macunaíma and Como era gostoso meu francês.