Brazilian art
The original inhabitants of the land, pre-Columbian Indigenous or Natives peoples, produced various forms of art; specific cultures like the Marajoara left sophisticated painted pottery.
The oldest known art in Brazil is the cave paintings in Serra da Capivara National Park in the state of Piauí,[1] dating back to c. 13,000 BC.
Jesuits assumed an important role in this process, with their many missionary establishments called "Reductions" teaching religion through art in the form of sacred plays, music, statuary, and painting.
[5][6] One single event in the 19th century sowed the seeds for a complete renewal in Brazilian visual arts: the arrival of the French Artistic Mission in 1816, which strongly reinforced the Neoclassical style, previously seen in Brazil only in timid attempts.
[7] A few decades later, under the personal patronage of Emperor Pedro II, who was engaged in an ambitious national project of modernization, the academy reached its golden age, fostering the emergence of the first generation of Romantic painters.
It must be said that in Brazil Romanticism in painting took a peculiar shape, not showing the overwhelming dramaticism, fantasy, violence, or interest in death and the bizarre commonly seen in the European version, and because of its academic and palatial nature all excesses were eschewed.
These trends combined in one of the most important accomplishments of the Romantic era in Brazil: the establishment of a Brazilian national identity based on Indian ancestry and the rich natural environment of the country.
Descriptions of nature and of the people of Brazil's varied regions as well as psychological romances proliferated with João Simões Lopes Neto, Aluísio Azevedo, Euclides da Cunha, and, above all, Machado de Assis, while Almeida Junior, Pedro Weingärtner, Oscar Pereira da Silva, and other Realist painters depicted folk types and the distinctive colors and light of Brazilian landscape.
Due to the radicalism (for the times) of some of their poems and music, the artists were vigorously booed and pelted by the audience, and the press and art critics in general were strong in their condemnation.
[13] The Week not only introduced to a wider public modern, experimental tendencies derived from European Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism, but also wanted to make use of national folklore as a basis for an art more relevant to the Brazilian reality, with an enhanced social awareness.
However, the radicalism of those first Modernists couldn't last for long in a society used to traditional fashions, and the original core members had separated by 1929, pursuing individual paths.
João Guimarães Rosa changed the face of Brazilian literature with his experimental language, and playwright Nelson Rodrigues dealt with crime, prejudice, passion, and sexual pathologies.
Its greatest achievement was the urban core of Brasília, designed by urbanist Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, now a World Heritage Site.
[16] The Coup d'état of 1964 and subsequent restriction of civil rights and freedom of expression in Brazil is commonly marked as the shifting point, whence artists such as Cildo Meireles and Rubens Gerchman began creating explicitly political art.
The title relates to the cultural movement of the same name, that called back to the Antropophagic Manifesto of the 1920s to offer a more tongue-in-cheek perspective on the myths of an exotic and "wild" Brazil.
The Véxoa exhibition showcases paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs and installations[22] all with the political goal of capturing and drawing attention to important issues currently affecting the Indigenous population, which come in the form of agribusiness, deforestation, illegal mining and climate change.
