In this introductory article, the curator and journalist Teniza Spinelli outlines the genealogy of print clubs in Brazil, beginning with the Grupo de Bagé (1948), and moving on to the Clube de Gravura de Porto Alegre (1950), which was the model for subsequent clubs in Brazil and then, after 1952, in the Southern Cone, in cities such as Curitiba, São Paulo, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Santiago, Chile. Spinelli stresses that all those clubs, to one extent or another, followed what had been done in the 1930s by the TGP (“the highly successful Mexican Taller de Gráfica Popular”) headed by Leopoldo Méndez. She also underscores the importance of the Grupo Bode Preto (1959) whose members, graduates of the Escola de Belas Artes de Porto Alegre, understood how to apply an expressionist form of art “to unrestricted aesthetic research.” In the early 1980s, according to Spinelli, the Ferias de Grabado [Print Fairs] were once again organized at the Praça da Alfândega (Porto Alegre), and the MAM group was founded (the name was based on the initials of the participating artists, Maria Tomaselli, Anico Herskovits, and Marta Loguércio) which launched the consortium of printmakers who would later move to the Oficina 11 (1991) workshop, and, shortly after that to the Museu do Trabalho, which took over the coordination of the consortium to this today. Another important club was the Atelier Livre da Prefeitura (1960), organized by the Brazilian artists Iberê Camargo, Francisco Stockinger, and Danúbio Gonçalves. This workshop, incidentally, is still functioning presently.   

This is the introductory essay in the catalogue for Trilhando a Gravura [On the Trail of the Print], the exhibition organized by the Ministério da Cultura through the Secretaria de Patrimônio, Museus e Artes Plásticas, together with the IPHAN (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico y Artístico Nacional), Museu Castro Maya do Rio de Janeiro and the Núcleo de Gravura do Rio Grande do Sul. The exhibition was held at the Museu Chácara do Céu, in Rio de Janeiro, from December 2001 to March 2002. Curated by Teniza Spinelli (b. 1943), the exhibition included works by graduates of the Clube de Gravura de Porto Alegre, most notably Carlos Scliar (1920–2001), Glauco Rodrigues (1929–2004), Glênio Bianchetti (1928–2014), and Danúbio Gonçalves (b. 1925). Also participating were members at the time of the current Núcleo de Gravura do Rio Grande do Sul, such as Adelaide Tomaselli, Maria Helena Pacheco, Maria Tomaselli (b. 1941), Wilson Cavalcanti (b. 1950), and Zorávia Bettiol (b. 1935).