Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism
Royal Academy of Arts (London), Jan – Apr/25
On view at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA) through April 2025, “Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism” is a large exhibition spanning decades of history, from the 1910s to the 1970s. Bringing together more than 130 works by ten artists, the show wanders through relevant themes, artistic tendencies, and cultural attitudes that were central to the development of modernism in Brazil.
Upon entering the opening gallery of RA’s Burlington House, the visitor gets a glimpse of another show hosted by the RA around 80 years ago. The “Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings”, held in November 1944, featured works by Brazilian modern artists for the first time in the UK, including names such as Tarsila do Amaral, Lasar Segall, and Candido Portinari. This exhibition served as a diplomatic gesture to strengthen Brazil-UK relations in the context of WWII, and several paintings were donated by the participating artists and later purchased, supporting the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund. Almost a century later, many of these artists make their way back to London, this time for an ambitious exhibition that aims to trace the origins of the movement.
Similar to the 1944 exhibition, “Brasil! Brasil!” is the result of a major collaborative effort among British and foreign museums and collections, particularly Brazilian private collectors who loaned works that are rarely seen. The colourfully designed gallery rooms dedicated to each of the artists provide a generous overview of their practice, with paintings unfolding like a grand narrative that tells the personal histories of these emblematic figures. The itinerary goes as follows: Anita Malfatti, Lasar Segall, Tarsila, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Portinari, Flávio de Carvalho, Djanira, Volpi, Geraldo de Barros, and Rubem Valentim.
Alongside the paintings, other key Brazilian names, concepts, and events take part in the dialogue, though mainly through the curatorial texts: the São Paulo Modern Art Week of 1922, the Grupo dos Cinco (Group of Five), writers and poets Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, and Menotti Del Picchia, the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist or Anthropophagite Manifesto), and the Grupo Ruptura (Rupture Group). While most of these references are somewhat familiar to the Brazilian public attending the show, they may present a whole new universe to general audiences.
As I write this text, “Brasil! Brasil!” has been visited by hundreds of people, and observing its overall reception has been interesting, to say the least. A few reviews published in local British newspapers have regarded the art currently on display at the RA as “weak”, “mediocre”, “pastiches of European modernism”, “bizarre”, “a waste”. Others are more flattering, referring to the exhibition as “radiant”, “brave”, and “sumptuous”. I agree that the exhibition is not perfect; the translation of all the works’ titles into English without including the original Portuguese and the limited historical context provided in some of the sections are among the main critiques.
However, at a time when discourses outside and beyond the Western canon are almost commonplace, it is surprising that an exhibition about a significant cultural movement in the largest country in Latin America (one that ultimately informed and shaped the country’s artistic production in the years that followed), can still provoke such contrasting reactions. Within the contemporary art circles, many believed that last year’s Venice Biennale was taking a straightforward approach by including a majority of artists from the global South and highlighting different modernisms from around the world, the so-called global modernisms. But it seems that we still need many more exhibitions showcasing and featuring as many forms of “modernisms” as possible. After all, the more anthropophagic, the better.
Carol Fucci for London Art Walk
April 2025