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From the 16th century, Roman Catholic
churches and convents in Brazil were decorated in the European style,
often by Brazilian craftsmen who had been trained in European methods.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, baroque and rococo patterns imported
from Portugal dominated Brazil's religious architecture and its interior
decor. Many of these churches can be seen today.
The most impressive artist of the
whole colonial period was the architect and sculptor
Antônio
Francisco Lisboa (1738-1814), better known as Aleijadinho (the "Little
Cripple"). The self-taught son of a Portuguese settler and a slave
mother, he was a master of sophisticated rococo decoration
and his painted wood sculpture and stone statuary have a timeless grandeur
of feeling. In mid-life Aleijadinho contracted a
crippling disease,
but he continued to work for another 30 years with
chisel and mallet strapped to his wrists. His artistry is seen in many
of the baroque
churches in his home state of Minas Gerais, especially
in the town of Ouro Preto and the surrounding area. In the neighbouring
town of
Congonhas do Campo, at the Church of Bom Jesus de
Matosinhos, Aleijadinho sculpted 12 life-sized soapstone statues of
the Prophets and placed
them on the terrace and staircase outside the entrance.
In front of the church's terraced stairs, in six small devotional chapels,
he created
the Stations of the Cross with 66 poignant statues
in cedar wood.
During the last four decades of the
18th century, new art appeared (especially in Rio
de Janeiro) in which religious themes were no longer predominant. Works
with temporal themes,
such as portraits of exalted personages, became part
of Rio's artistic production.At the beginning of the 19th century there
was a process
of "Europeanization" with the coming of the Portuguese Court
to Brazil as the result of the invasion of Portugal by Napoleon Bonaparte's
troops. Dom João VI, the refugee Portuguese monarch, encouraged
Rio de Janeiro's intellectual activity, founding cultural institutions
such as the Royal Press and the National Library. In addition, he brought
a group of French masters to Brazil to establish an Academy of Arts
and Crafts after the style of European art academies and to implement
the neoclassic style in the "modernization" plan for the
royal capital of Rio de Janeiro. Artists such as
the Taunay brothers, architect Auguste Grandjean de Montigny (1776-1850),
and painter Jean-Baptiste
Debret (1768-1848) were part of the group. Debret,
the most important of the French artists, systematically documented
landscapes, people,
and rural and urban customs. The tradition established
by Debret and his colleagues was so strong that neoclassicism and participation
in
academies ruled Brazilian visual arts well into the
Republican era.
At the Week of Modern Art held in
São Paulo in 1922, artists discussed their dissatisfactions
with the "academic" world in all fields of the Brazilian
arts. The modernists wished to shock the academicians.
It is not clear if the 1922 movement caused or coincided with some
changes in outlook.
It certainly opened broad new avenues such as the
critical pursuit of quality, the search for new values, and the rejection
of the old
European stereotypes. There was no precursor of genius
in Brazilian painting: in the 1920's painting simply emerged out of
the shadows
of the academy and joined the wave of innovation
then sweeping Europe. The techniques were imported, but the moods and
themes were clearly
Brazilian. Lasar Segall (1891-1957), in 1913, was
the first artist to exhibit modern art. One of the most important participants
in the
Week of Modern Art was Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976),
a true Bohemian from a family of poets and generals who liked to carouse
in the underworld
of Rio and paint seductive, mulatto women.
Cândido Portinari (1903-1962)
was one of the first Brazilian artists to paint his way to international
fame. Coming from a small coffee plantation in the interior of São
Paulo, he experimented with Brazilian themes and
colors. Once he sent for 60 pounds of earth from different areas and
mixed the black, purple,
reddish, and yellow dirt with his paints. Portinari
captured in his canvases the way of life of ordinary people, conveying
their joys and
sufferings in a dramatic way. The universality of
his work led to invitations and commissions from many sources, among
them the monumental murals
at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and
murals on the theme of war and peace at the United Nations in New York.
World War II brought about an interruption
in the contact of Brazilian artists with the international
art world, even though many foreign artists lived in Brazil. With the
end of the
War, financial sponsorship began to stimulate artistic
production. In the late 1940's the Modern Art Museum was founded in
Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo got two museums - the Art Museum of São
Paulo founded by Assis Chateaubriand and the Museum of Modern Art.
With the numerous courses given in these museums, art exhibitions and
other museum activities were stimulated throughout Brazil. The São
Paulo Biennial, founded in 1951 by Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, helped
to call Brazilian artists to the attention of an international audience,
and to introduce foreign artistic innovations to Brazil. During the
1950s. the Biennials were the most important artistic events in Latin
America making São Paulo the centre of great exhibitions of
contemporary art and of "flashbacks" of international movements.
Today, the art scene in Brazil is
self-assured. Brazil's painters, sculptors, engravers
and lithographers show their works both within Brazil and in museums
and galleries throughout
the world. Current artists include: Lygia Pape, Amélia Toledo,
Cildo Meireles, Jac Leirner, Regina Silveira, José Rezende,
Waltércio Caldas Jr., Anna Bella Geiger, Rubem Valentim, and
Glauco Rodrigues.
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