In this essay the controversial Brazilian art theoretician Ferreira Gullar challenges the universality of the notion of an aesthetic avant-garde, as well as its relevance in underdeveloped countries. Particularly in Brazil, where the pursuit of avant-garde forms of expression interrupted the early experimentation that influenced the development of their original style; and where it was thus impossible to generate similar results to those obtained in artistic circles in European countries. According to Gullar, Brazilian modernism was heir to a diverse heritage that was more concerned with transforming society than with an autonomous type of evolution. In Brazilian modern art, nationalism was the basic focus of imported avant-garde ideas. Brazilian painting adopted certain aspects of the European artistic language in order to portray national subjects in modern ways, while ignoring the experimentation that was being conducted with increasingly abstract forms of expression. It was, in fact, an approach that would not come full circle until the arrival of the post-1945 generations of artists, who rejected a national subject matter in favor of Universalist movements. In the most significant Brazilian works of art, the influence of foreign formal renewal thus coexists with essentially national concerns, making them utterly unique, original, and authentic.       

This review by the Brazilian art critic [José Ribamar] Ferreira Gullar (b. 1930) addresses the question of the links between avant-garde(s) and underdevelopment in dialectical terms, examining individual and universal facets of the creation of works of art. Seen through that prism, the definition of an avant-garde type of art hinges on an assessment of the socio-cultural characteristics of the particular circumstances in question. This formulation underscores the relevance of the internationalist nature of contemporary art and, in the same vein, questions the role of so-called national expressions at a time of increasing cultural interrelationships among the nations of the world.   

The book Vanguarda e subdesenvolvimento: ensaios sobre arte [Avant-garde and Underdevelopment: Essays on Art] was written between 1965 and 1969, during the post-military coup period (1964–85) that overshadowed two decades of life in Brazil. In these circumstances, the author joined the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) at a time when local leftists were immersed in the process of redirection and self-criticism that, to one extent or another, set the tone for Ferreira Gullar’s essays, and especially for his critical view of imported avant-garde ideas. The author’s Marxist method is inspired by two basic threads in the work of the Hungarian thinker György Lukács (1885–1971): the centrality of the individual in aesthetics, and the premise that both the work of art and the artist are an intrinsic part of specific historical situations.   

In reference to this matter and for more information, see by Ferreira Gullar, “Caráter nacional da arte” [doc. no. 807930].