In this text, French sociologist Roger Bastide, who resided in Brazil, provides a biographical sketch of Carlos [Frederico] Bastos. He explains that, as part of a movement in the forties to renovate the art scene in Bahia, Bastos acted as a counterpoint in a context of traditionalist provincialism still deeply embedded in the state of Bahia. Bastide underscores the surrealist and abstract nature of Bastos’s work, comparing it to the work of Modern artists like Amedeo Modigliani and Henri Matisse. The author asserts that Bastos’s works have a distinct “Bahian style” and a “tropical sensibility.” The sensuality of his drawings and paintings makes itself felt in the Yoruba Candomblé rituals, that is, the Afro-Brazilian rites widespread in northeastern Brazil.

Sociologist Roger Bastide detects a regional or typically Bahian feel in the lines and rhythms of drawings and paintings by Carlos [Frederico] Bastos (1925–2004) regardless of the themes he represents. Bastos was, Bastide asserts, deeply influenced by the culture of the city of Salvador and its surroundings. Along with local artists like Mário Cravo Jr., Carybé, and Genaro de Carvalho, he was part of the “modernist” movement to renew the art scene. His work revolved around detailed depictions of the culture of the Bahia region, and its role in Yoruba and Afro-Brazilian religious culture.

Bastide first traveled to Brazil to replace anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss as the professor of the Sociology 1 course to be given at the Departamento de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de São Paulo, which had recently been founded (1934). He ended up staying in Brazil into the eighties. Bastide’s work revolved around Afro-Brazilian religions, particularly Candomblé.

[For further reading, see in the ICAA digital archive by Raul Lody “Coleção Arthur Ramos” (doc. no. 1110525); “Coleção culto afro-brasileiro: um documento do candomblé na cidade do Salvador” (doc. no. 1110527); “Coleção culto afro-brasileiro: um testemunho do Xangô pernambucano” (doc. no. 1110526); “Dezoito esculturas antropomorfas de orixás” (doc. no. 1110529); “Símbolo do mando” (doc. no. 1110531); and “Yorubá: um estudo etno-tecnológico de 50 peças da coleção arte africana do Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes” (doc. no. 1110532). In addition, see by Abelardo Duarte “Catálogo ilustrado da Coleção Perseverança” (doc. no. 1110522); by Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura “Religiosidade africana no Brasil; Arte afro-brasilidade” (doc. no. 1110519); by Maria Lúcia Montes “Cosmologias e altares” (doc. no. 1110528); by Luiz Felipe de Alencastro “Geopolítica da mestiçagem” (doc. no. 1111371); from the Museu Histórico Nacional “Para nunca esquecer. Negras memórias. Memórias de negros” (doc. no. 1110530); by Jocélio Teles dos Santos “Catálogo do Museu Afro Brasileiro = Catalogue of the Afro-Brazilian Museum” (doc. no. 1110521); by Vagner Gonçalves da Silva “Arte religiosa afro-brasileira. As múltiplas estéticas da devoção brasileira” (doc. no. 1110520); by Oneyda Alvarenga “Catálogo ilustrado do Museu Folclórico” (doc. no. 1110523); and by Rita Amaral “A coleção etnográfica de cultura religiosa afro-brasileira do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo” (doc. no. 1110533)].