In his review of exhibitions held in 1981, Frederico Morais mentions the role of the curator as an emergent figure in the art world of Rio de Janeiro. He goes on to discuss the challenge faced by young artists working with more traditional approaches and media—in the crowded field of the late 1970s and early 1980s—as compared to the range and limitations of conceptual art that literally made “prisoners” of them.  

Frederico de Morais (b.1936) is one of the key figures in Brazilian art criticism. He was a newspaper art critic for many years, at Diário de Notícias and at O Globo, both of which were in Rio de Janeiro. He was one of the most active of the “committed” critics of the 1960s and 1970s, having supported a number of avant-garde movements of the period and also working as a curator.

This article is of interest because it reveals a contradiction in the position taken by Morais; until then, he had always enthusiastically supported the experimental works of the avant-garde, as was apparent during the projects he organized at the Museu de Arte Moderna – Rio called Domingos da criação in the early 1970s—see “O público: o exercício da liberdade” [doc. no. 1110476]. In this document, Morais approves of blending art with everyday activities, as in the slogans used in Paris in 1968, along the lines of what was done by the historical twentieth-century avant-gardes in the name of “creative freedom” and the “exercise of freedom.”

On the matter of the analytical position he adopted that contradicted the Brazilian “avant-garde” in the 1960s and early 1970s, see Morais’ book, Artes plásticas: A crise da hora atual (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e terra, 1975).