In his book Explode  Geração! the art critic Roberto Pontual discusses his thoughts on the emergence of the generation that produced an “explosion” of painting in Brazil in the 1980s. Pontual writes in a very personal style, in keeping with the new artistic spirit of the time, and posits connections between the “political opening,” which marked an end to almost two decades of military dictatorship (1964–85), and the emergence of this generation of painters. The author sketches a brief history of Brazilian art in the aftermath of the Second World War and of the international art scene (which he observed in Europe following his voluntary exile in 1980), describing the backdrop to the emergence of Postmodernism. In addition to referring to the Baroque, Pontual focuses on the duality of Thanatos and Eros, which he claims represents the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. He mentions the “death of art” and the artistic production that follows it. He returns to the concept of “pleasure,” which he uses to establish a polarity of motivations that is occasionally, in his opinion, “oedipal.”

A native of Recife in the state of Pernambuco, Roberto Pontual worked as a journalist and a literary and art critic in Rio de Janeiro. In 1969, he published the Dicionário de Artes Plásticas, a point of reference in Brazilian art. An active participant in Brazilian art circles since the 1960s, he was one of the major art critics in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s. He was also the director of exhibitions at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna) from 1973 to 1976. In 1978 he organized the exhibition Geometria sensível at theMAM-RJ, for which he earned still more notoriety. Due to the tensions produced by the military dictatorship, he voluntarily exiled himself to Paris in 1980 where he lived until his death in 1992.

Roberto Pontual wrote Explode[AB1]  Geração! (Rio de Janeiro: Avenir, 1984) in which he attempts to articulate his personal, at times literary, views on Brazilian art of the 1980s, specifically as regards artists such as Mônica Nador and Ana Maria Tavares in São Paulo, and Leda Catunda, Sérgio Romagnolo, and Beatriz Milhazes in Rio de Janeiro. See, in the ICAA digital archive, his manifesto in which he identifies with that earlier generation in “Semana nacional de poesia de vanguarda: comunicado e conclusões” (doc. no. 1110501). For additional reading on this subject, see Ricardo Basbaum’s “Pintura dos anos 80: Algumas observações críticas” (doc. no. 1110972). 

[As complementary reading, see the archive for the following texts written by Roberto Pontual: “Corpos de afago e dor = Bodies of caress and pain” (doc. no. 1111211), “Crise da crise? A resposta também pode ser nossa” (doc. no. 1110986), “Os dois Brasis” (doc. no. 1110617), “Em torno do sistema da arte” (doc. no. 1110554), “Expor: impor ou propor?” (doc. no. 1110954), “Imagens da imagem” (doc. no. 1110688), “A natureza reposta em arte” (doc. no. 1111359), “Notas sôbre a xilogravura popular brasileira” (doc. no. 1111031), “Um panorama brasileiro” (doc. no. 1110604), “O quase mago Roberto Magalhães” (doc. no.1111080), “Sistema de arte em questão: o que fazer?” (doc. no. 1111082), and “Waltércio Caldas: luz e enigma” (doc. no. 1110563)].