The catalogue for Arte e religiosidade afro-brasileira, the exhibition held at the Kunstverein Museum, in Frankfurt in 1994, introduces the work of contemporary artists of African descent or whose work is inspired by African culture. The exhibition includes statues of black Catholic saints, traditional sculptures and objects by unknown artists, and works by European artists who, in the nineteenth century, recorded the presence of Africans and their descendants in Brazil. The catalogue also includes reproductions of ritual objects used in candomblé (the Brazilian cult with pure African roots) and Umbanda (an Afro-Catholic syncretism that was adopted in Brazil). There are also essays by the exhibition’s curators: the sociologist Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura and the visual artist Emanoel Araújo. Moura outlines the history of the Brazilian slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; he discusses the forced conversion of captured Africans to Catholicism and the development and spread of candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil, and describes their divinities, temples, and ritual objects. Araújo, meanwhile, writes about the role of black artists in Brazilian art (mainly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries), comparing their work to the work of contemporary artists such as Agnaldo Manoel dos Santos, Mestre Didi, Ronaldo Rego, Waldeloir Rego, and Rubem Valentim.

This document provides an overview of Afro-Brazilian art and religiosity written for an international audience that is new to the field. It includes essays by the sociologist Eugênio Marcondes de Moura (b. 1933) and the artist Emanoel Araújo (b. 1942), and reviews the work of Agnaldo Manoel dos Santos (1926–62), Mestre Didi (1917–2013), Ronaldo Rego (b. 1956), Waldeloir Rego (1930–2001), and Rubem Valentim (1922–91). The exhibition Arte e religiosidade afro-brasileira was part of the forty-sixth Frankfurt Book Fair (Germany, 1994), an international event that addressed the subject “Brazil — Encounter of Cultures.” The exhibition underscored the substantial African contribution to Brazilian art, from the eighteenth century until the present day, and highlighted the aesthetic nature of Afro-Brazilian popular and religious culture. The collection undoubtedly contained a bare minimum of the heritage of works illustrated in the document.

Raul Lody (b. 1952), the anthropologist and specialist in Afro-Brazilian religions, published several studies on this subject, including Vinte e um bastões cerimoniais (Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional, 1990), Dezoito esculturas antropomorfas de orixás [see doc. no. 1110529], and others along those lines, such as Coleção culto afro-Brasileiro: um documento do candomblé na cidade do Salvador [doc. no. 1110527]; Yorubá: um estudo etno-tecnológico de 50 peças da coleção arte africana do Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes [doc. no. 1110532]; and Coleção Arthur Ramos [doc. no. 1110525].

Other essays and studies on this subject, published by noted specialists, that have already been included in the ICAA digital archive, include Cosmologias e altares, by Maria Lúcia Montes [doc. no. 1110528]; Cem anos de arte afro-brasileira, by Marta Heloísa Salum [doc. no. 1110524]; Catálogo do Museu Afro Brasileiro, by Jocélio Teles dos Santos [doc. no. 1110521]; and Arte e religiosidade afro-brasileira, by Vagner Gonçalves da Silva (São Paulo: Câmara Brasileira do Livro, 2008).