Brasil: Comemorative Exhibitions or:

Notes on the presence of Brazilian Modernists in

International Exhibitions

Aracy Amaral

Universidade de São Paulo

The attendance of Brazilian modernists in international exhibitions

began in inconsistent manner, as
they showed next to other artists, some
of whom were academics, others transitional. Even so, their
appearance
revealed that show organizers also acknowledged their significance. Beginning
in the 1950s,
the works of selected Brazilian modernists have been shown
at international exhibitions as a way to
present the precursors of contemporary
art in our country.

1) Here I refer to exhibitions held since 1923 (such as Maison

de l'Amérique Latine, in
Paris, in which Tarsila showed her
work); one year later in March 1924 there was an
exhibition entitled
Exposition
D'Art Américain-Latin, in Paris, Musée Galliéra.
Among
others participated Curatella Manes, Emilio Pettoruti, and Xul Solar,
from Argentina. And
from Brasil: Angelina Agostini, Anita Malfatti and
Victor Brecheret.

2) I also refer to the anthological show (The First Representative

Collection of Paintings by
Contemporary Brazilian Artists) held at
the Roerich Museum, of Nova York, in October of
1930. This show was organized
by Frances R. Grant, who traveled to Brazil to select the
participating
artists (Christian Brinton wrote the preface for the catalog). The Brazilian
modernists in this exhibition included Tarsila, Di Cavalcanti, Anita Malfatti,
Cícero Dias,
Ismael Nery, Guignard, and Antonio Gomide, as well
as artists viewed as less significant in
terms of artistic renovation.
These academic or transitional artists included Almeida Júnior,
Teodoro Braga, Georgina and Lucilio de Albuquerque, Edson Motta, and Quirino
da Silva,
among many others; 3) Also in 1930, Vicente do Rego Monteiro
showed in the inaugural
show of the Groupe d'Artistes Latino-Américains
de Paris.

4) Shrouded in pre-World War II atmosphere, the first editions of so-called

Latin American
art shows, as for example at the Riverside Museum, of New
York, were organized
concurrently with the 1939 New York World Fair. But,
without a doubt, the star Brazilian
attraction at the event was the ultra
modern pavilion designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar
Niemeyer, and decorated
with artistic panels and sculptures (the bust of Brazilian president
Getulio
Vargas, for one). These creations proudly showed off Brazil’s program of
image
projection in foreign countries, which was definitively linked to
Vargas’ dictatorial Estado
Novo regime.

5) During World War II, at the same time that Brazil hosted two major
French exhibitions,
in 1940 and 1945, and an American art show, in 1944,
a group of Brazilian artists that
included several modernists showed their
works at London’s Royal College of Arts, in
November-December 1944. Sacheverell
Sitwell wrote the preface and Brazilian critic
Rubem Navarra presented
this exhibition held as a Royal Air Force benefit. On the
occasion, an
annoyed Mário de Andrade reported on the reaction of British critics,
who
referred to the Brazilian production on display as "second rate" and
dependent upon the
 Parisian creation. In other words, according to Mário
de Andrade, foreigners – and, in that
specific case, the British – always
expect
Brazilians to present an "exotic art", whereas in
Brazil we made a point
of presenting a "white man’s" art.

"The things we have to put up with," Andrade wrote. Contrarily to what

is expected from
Brazilian art in foreign countries, to date this stands
as the forever unresolved issue or yet
the desire for self-assertion of
Brazilian artists.

6) In South America, in 1945, writer Marques Rebelo organized a major

exhibition of great
significance to Brazil that was shown in Buenos Aires,
La Plata, and Montevideo. A co-
founder of museums such as those of Rezende
and Florianopolis, for example, Rebelo
curated this exhibition titled "Veinte
Artistas Brasileños" (Twenty Brazilian Artists).
Argentine Cubist
artist and Museu de La Plata director Pettoruti, who had visited Brazil
in
1928 and was a friend of Guignard, wrote the presentation for the catalogue.
He was also
one of the first artists to render the Cubist art language
in his country. Those were tranquil
days, when the exhibition was the subject
of two books published in that same year, one by
Argentine critic Jorge
Romero Brest, (1) and the other by critic Cipriano Vitureira,
of
Montevideo.

7) A year later, in October and November of 1946, critic Berco Udler

was to organize
another traveling exhibition, "Exposición Contemporánea
Brasileña" (Brazilian
Contemporary Exhibition), at the Instituto
de Extensión de Artes Plásticas, in Santiago and
Valparaiso
(Chile). Here again, a number of modernists were among the selected artists.

8) More than ten years later, in 1957, Buenos Aires was to host another
show of Brazilian
art,"Arte moderno en Brasil"(Modern Art in Brazil).
Brazilian ambassador João Carlos
Muniz supported the event presented
by Romero Brest (2) and critic Carlos Flexa Ribeiro
at
the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

9) In fact, the first carefully organized exhibit on Modernism in Brazil

to be shown in
foreign countries was the great and anthological show "Art
of Latin America Since
Independence," curated by Terence Grieder and
Stanton Catlin, in 1966. The exhibition
was held at Yale University, University
of Texas at Austin, San Francisco La Jolla
Museum, and Isaac Delgado Museum
of Art, in New Orleans.

10) If I am not mistaken, part of the collection shown at Yale and Austin
was presented at
the Inter American Art Center, (the former Center for
Inter American Relations) of New
York, in September of 1967, under the
title "Precursors of Modernism in Latin America."

Segments on Modernism or Special exhibitions focusing Modernism

What did Modernism bring as implications for Latin America, except a

desire for the renewal of artistic
language combined with a quest for self-assertion
or for the assertion of national art (be it in Mexico, or
in Brazil, in
Uruguay – Torres Garcia, and even Figari, for example –, and in the Andean
region with
the emergence of the indigenous muralism?) The upshot, however,
was that the commemorations of
centennials of independence of all Latin
American countries had brought up the questions, "Who are
we?" and "What
is our identity?", which echoed not only in the realm of art, but also
in music and
literature. Even Jorge Luis Borges did not escape these issues
in his writings of the 1920s.

11) In the second half of the eighties, the Indianapolis Museum

of Art presented, by
initiative of its director Hollister Sturges, the
show Art of the Fantastic / Latin America,
1920-1987 organized by
Holliday Day. I believe that this exhibition not only granted
substantial
exposure to the Modernism of the Americas, but also was seen as a revelation
in
the United States.
12) Brazilian Modernism was given a remarkable similar exposure at the
retrospective
show Art Brésilien du XXe. Siècle (Brazilian
Art of the 20th Century) held at the Modern
Art Museum of the
City of Paris, from December 1987 to February 1988. This show was a
counterpart
to the exhibition Contrastes de Formas (Contrast of Forms) based
on Léger’s
namesake series that had visited Museu de Arte de São
Paulo – MASP in Brazil, at an
earlier date. As far as I know, this was
the first time that an international show presented at
the Modern Art Musem
in Paris was organized jointly by na European museum curator,
Marie Odile
Briot, and foreign curators, the Brazilian critics Frederico Moraes, Roberto
Pontual, and myself.

13) Two years later (1989), British art historian Dawn Ades, of Essex
University, which has
assembled today a collection of art from Latin America,
organized a major exhibition titled
"Art in Latin America." Unprecedented
in England, the show presented at The South Bank
Centre, in London, an
anthological view of art produced in Hispanic America and
Portuguese America.
(3)

14) On the wake of the Paris event, other centers became interested
in showing the modern
and contemporary art produced in Brazil. For example,
in 1992, the grandiose exhibition
"Brasilien" was organized in Zurich
that presented in different venues throughout the city
the works of modernist
and contemporary Brazilian artists. (4)

15) In several countries in Latin America, the news was received with
surprise and
misgivings: Spain had entrusted to U.S. curator Waldo Rasmussen,
of MOMA’s
International Department, in New York, the organization of the
show of Latin American art
that commemorated the 500th anniversary of the
discovery of America. This attitude
mirrored the desire for internationalism
that Spanish museum institutions had so coveted
since the late eighties,
and that was also manifested when Thomas Messer, former director
of Guggenheim,
in New York, was appointed "La Caixa" director. After the inaugural show
held in Seville, the exhibition proceeded to Paris, where it was partially
shown, then to
Cologne, and finally New York, where it arrived the next
year (1993) with a work selection
that was no longer the original presented
at the beginning of the tour. The catalogs
published for the different
editions of this exhibition titled Latin American Artists of the
XXth
Century, however, featured different prefaces and presentations authored
by critics
and historians from the host cities, or from Latin America,
next to writings by Waldo
Rasmussen and art historian Edward Sullivan,
both from the United States.

16) As part of the 1992 commemorations of the fifth centennial of the

Discovery of
America, other countries meant to pay tribute to Latin American
art, beginning with
Modernism. One example is the exhibition Voces de
Ultramar/Arte en América Latina y
Canarias (1910-1962) shown
on Grand Canary Island.

17) In the sphere of commemorative events – particularly, the 500th

anniversary of the
discovery of Brazil –, exhibitions were organized that
included mega events as the 5th
centennial show held at Ibirapuera Park,
in São Paulo, in 2000. To date parts of this show
are still visiting
galleries in different parts of Brazil, Europe, and the United States,
as for
example "Brazil: Body and Soul" - Brasil: Corpo e Alma (featuring
from baroque to
contemporary art made in Brazil), which recently opened
at the Guggenheim in New York.
This exhibition featuring a collection of
Brazilian modernism has been curated and
sponsored by Brasil Connects,
a private Brazilian organization stemmed from the São
Paulo Biennial
Foundation, rather than by the New York museum.

18) In 2000, the exhibition "Olhares Modernistas" (Modernist

Gazes) was presented as a
tribute to Brazilian Modernism at the Museu do
Chiado, in Lisbon, concurrently with other
commemorations of the discovery
of Brazil. The show was organized by Tiago dos Reis
Miranda, of Portugal,
with the collaboration of University of São Paulo faculty members.
 19) At about that same time another exhibition devoted to Modernism
was organized by
IVAM – Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, of Spain,
under the title Brasil – de la
Antropofagia a Brasília – (1920/1960)
(Brazil: from anthropophagy to Brasilia, 1920-
1960). From October 2000
to January 2001, the show curated by Jorge Schwartz presented
the Brazilian
literary and art production of that period.

Conclusion

Our intention with this swift and most certainly incomplete overview
was to inventory the main
international exhibitions that have shown in
foreign countries the Brazilian Modernism as a special
segment or as subject
of different events in the realm of the visual arts.

Even smaller events, such as for example the show focusing Tarsila
Frida Kahlo Amélia Peláez that
Irma Arestizabal curated
and presented at the foundation "La Caixa" of Madrid and Barcelona, in
1997,
also deserve to be mentioned. (5)

Other international shows certainly included Brazilian artists among

their special guests, despite being
events that championed the dissemination
of vanguard ideas. Here I refer to Concrete Kunst, the show
organized
by Max Bill, in Zurich, in 1960, and attended by Cordeiro, Sacilotto, Willys
de Castro, and
Ligia Clark, among others. Finally, to mention one more
event, at a time when the art of Brazil was not
yet disseminated abroad,
the exhibition Information was held at MoMA, in New York in the
summer of
1970. The show curated by Kynaston McShine presented works by
Cildo Meirelles, Oiticica,
Guilherme Magalhães Vaz, and Barrio.

It is not feasible to list all the recent shows of contemporary art

(both in Europe and in the United
States), other than Documenta or Biennial
editions, that have featured works by Brazilian modernists.
However, of
paramount importance in this sense was Magiciens de la Terre, an
exhibition curated by
Jean Hubert Martin and shown in 1989, when it attained
a remarkable repercussion internationally and
leveraged the exposure of
several participating Brazilian artists.

Yet, it was the reading and projection extended to Brazilian artists

by the sensibility of Guy Brett that
imparted visibility, in the European
art scene, to the art production of an entire Brazilian experimental
generation,
beginning in the late sixties and early seventies (for example, Ligia Clark,
Helio Oiticica,
Mira Schendel, Camargo, Cildo Meirelles, etc.).

On the other hand, we must acknowledge the gaze on the Brazilian contemporary
art produced as of the
sixties in Latin America, which was presented at
the Guggemheim Museum in New York (1966) on its
own initiative. On that
occasion, Thomas Messer curated the exhibition The Emergent Decade,
and
invited an outstanding photographer, Cornell Capa, to co-author the
catalog. To this end, Capa traveled
to all the represented countries and
visited the studios of all artists included in Messer’s selection.

Notes

(1). Jorge Romero Brest, La pintura Brasileña

Contemporánea, Bs.Aires, Editorial Poseidón, 1945.

(2). By that time an intensive artistic exchange had

been taking place between the two countries that
started with the implementation
of the São Paulo Biennial and an exhibition at the Museu de Arte
Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, in 1953, of works by Argentina’s Concrete artists.

(3). At times the allocation of artists in different

segments may seem somewhat strange, as for example
the inclusion of Torres
Garcia in the space devoted to fantastic art.

(4). Important bilingual catalogues were published for

all these exhibitions I have mentioned.
(5). At the same time, no Brazilian modernist was selected
for the exhibition held in the Hirschorn
Museum of Washington, D.C., in
1922, as a tribute to outstanding 20th-century artists, including Matta,
Torres Garcia, Rivera, and Lam...