This is the third chapter of the book by Lourival Gomes Machado that analyzes the development of modern art in Brazil, in which the author includes a reference to the contribution made to contemporary painting by the “spontaneous” artists (whose works are described as “primitive”). According to Gomes Machado, nothing short of a profound renewal of Brazilian modernism could create an overlap between the “scholarly” artists of the famous Semana de Arte Moderna event held in 1922, which explored Brazil’s traditional roots, and those who were influenced by traditional forms of art, whose instinct or impulsive nature led them to discover the techniques they used to improve their painting. The members of the latter group made an essential contribution to the Brazilian modernist movement with “their primitive line, their child-like approach, and the traditional rough finish of their work.” Gomes Machado mentions Emídio de Souza (also known as Souza de Itanhaém) who, in his opinion, was the most reminiscent of “Le Douanier” Henri Rousseau, although he describes Heitor dos Prazeres as a totally unique artist, calling him an “island that is totally isolated from the Brazilian archipelago.”

This article is an example of the kind of historiographic revision of Afro-Brazilian art that occurred during the modernist period; it seeks to identify certain artists and their work that have never been acknowledged. The inclusion of the painter and musician Heitor dos Prazeres (1898–1966) in the book Retrato da arte moderna do Brasil was perhaps one of the earliest attempts to recognize the work of this painter and composer of sambas who, later on, took third prize for painting at the I Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, in 1951, and was subsequently entitled to a room of his own in which to exhibit his works at the second edition of that Biennial (1953). The art critic Lourival Gomes Machado saw in Heitor’s painting the “first onslaught”—in the field of visual arts—of the subculture that had been created by black Brazilians in large cities. Without a hint of marginalization, and using a technique that “an academician would find stunning,” the painter’s work is remarkable for its use of enamels on wood to create scenes of people dancing the samba, based on “marvelous mosaics” of “unusual and varied” patterns, illustrations, and adornments. The sections of the book that refer to Heitor dos Prazeres place him at the forefront of “the groups” of islanders, but never among the “acclaimed and successful” ones; he is portrayed here as one of the anonymous artists, despite the fact that the originality of his work defined him as something powerful and unexpected.           

As had happened with dos Prazeres, the Brazilian painter and musician Emídio de Souza (1867–1949) was “discovered”—in 1939, after producing art for many years—by another painter, the Italian-Brazilian Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988), and had his work exhibited thanks to the efforts of the art critic Sérgio Milliet (1898–1966).  

Lourival Gomes Machado (1917?67) was a journalist, art critic, and art historian. In 1941 he joined forces with intellectuals such as Antonio Candido, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, and Décio de Almeida Prado to publish Clima (São Paulo), a magazine designed to promote a renewal in the fields of Brazilian literary, cinema, and theater criticism. During that decade he was the art critic at the newspaper Folha da Manhã and covered world politics as a columnist at O Estado de S. Paulo. When the Belgian curator Léon Degand quit his job, Gomes Machado took his place as Director of the MAM/SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo) (1949?51). His best-known work, Barroco Mineiro (1969), is a collection of articles on the subject, a project he began in 1953 with Teorias do Barroco.   

As complementary reading to this article, see another essay by Gomes Machado in which he looks at Brazilian painting from the perspective of both individual freedom and environmental determinism, “O outro cavalo de Tróia” [doc. no. 1110724].