Modernism in Brazil
[3][4] According to some scholars, Recife pioneered this artistic movement in Brazil through the works of Vicente do Rego Monteiro, the poetry of Manuel Bandeira, the sociology of Gilberto Freyre, manifestations of popular culture such as frevo and cordel and the urban changes that occurred in the city during that period.
The third phase, called Post-Modernist by several authors (or also known as the 1945 Generation), opposed the first stage and was ridiculed with the nickname Parnassianism; it was characterized by a mixture of styles and a concern with aesthetics, whose predominant literary genre was poetry.
Consequently, all the excitement that characterized the beginning of the 20th century in Europe arrived in Brazil as a moment of renewal and the search to produce a new model of art that was concerned with social issues.
[9] A month after the Modern Art Week, Brazil was experiencing two moments of great political importance: the presidential elections and the founding congress of the Communist Party in Niterói.
In 1926, the Democratic Party emerged, with Mário de Andrade as one of its founders, and in 1932, the Brazilian Integralist Action, a radical nationalist movement founded by Plínio Salgado was created.
In this context, the Regionalist Center of the Northeast, located in Recife and chaired by Gilberto Freyre, sought to develop a sense of unity in the region according to the new modernist molds, promoting conferences, art exhibitions and congresses.
[2][14][15] The Anthropophagic Movement was characterized by critical assimilation ("swallowing") of European avant-gardes and cultures, with the purpose of recreating them to rediscover Brazil in its primitive authenticity.
[19] Both the poetry of the '22 and '30 generations were contemporary, since most of the '30 poets absorbed the '22 experiences, such as thematic freedom, a taste for updated or inventive expression, free verse and anti-academicism.
Together with Érico Verissimo, Orígenes Lessa and other writers, they created a new style, completely modern and totally freed from traditional language, in which they incorporated real regional speech.
The writers of the second generation also incorporated serious social issues into their works: social inequality, the cruel life of the migrants, the remnants of slavery and the coronelism based on land ownership[19] The transformation of Brazil's socio-political scenario also changed literature; the end of the Vargas era, the rise and fall of populism, the military dictatorship and the Cold War were all major influences on the third generation.
At the same time, regionalism acquired a new dimension with Guimarães Rosa's recreation of the customs and speech of the backlands, reaching deep into the psychology of the jagunço of Northeastern Brazil.
[20][21] The third generation emerged with poets opposed to the modernist innovations of 1922, which led many scholars (such as Alceu Amoroso Lima and Ivan Junqueira) to describe this group as Post-Modernist.
The new proposal, initially defended by the Orpheu magazine in 1947, denied formal freedom, irony, satire and other modernist characteristics; the poets sought a more "balanced and serious" poetry.
