This was a lecture by the art historian and critic Walter Zanini about the arts activities of the Japanese community in Brazil, particularly in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Although this study is focused on the art world after World War II, the writer records the first signs of art emerging among the Japanese immigrants in Brazil starting in the 1920s. During that period, there were performances in the Kabuki-theater style, commemorative fiestas and traveling Japanese film series. In Zanini’s opinion, it was around the mid-1940s when the descendants began to acquire careers as independent professionals. Thus, in the 1950s, Brazil began to have Japanese dance companies and musical groups, as well as the Sociedade Paulista de Cultura Japonesa and the Aliança Brasil-Japão, also organized in that period. The dissemination of the “art of the Japanese garden” began to appear then as well. Beyond those popular art forms, Zanini pays special attention to the field of the visual arts. This began with the formation of the first small groups of artists (the Seibi-kai in 1935) and went on to the Japanese contribution to Abstract art in Brazil during the 1950s. This was followed by the appearance of “Nisei” painters (second generation, born in Brazil), who were influenced by Surrealism and even took part in the “New Figuration” in the 1960s. To the writer, the work produced by these artists must not be seen as a category apart from (or foreign to) Brazilian art, because these artists were active participants in it. As a group, they reconstructed and changed certain aspects of visual arts development in Brazil.

The lecture “A colônia japonesa e as artes” by Walter Zanini (1925–2013) was part of the program of the Colóquio Brasil-Japão, organized by the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) in 1966. The purpose of the symposium was to create incentives for studies of the political, socioeconomic and cultural relationships between the two countries. As director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP, Zanini gave this lecture on the cultural activities of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Brazil. (The lecture was subsequently published in the annals of the symposium.) Zanini placed the most emphasis on the visual arts, especially on the work of Tomoo Handa, Yoshiya Takaoka, Shigeto Tanaka, Takashi Fukushima, Manabu Mabe, Tomie Ohtake, Flávio Shiró, Kazuo Wakabayashi, Yo Yoshitome, Bin Kondo and João Suzuki. This was one of the first systematic analyses of this theme, and the lecturer regarded Japanese art as one element in the formation of Modern art in Brazil from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The catalogue of the 8º Salão de Artes Plásticas, organized by the Grupo Seibi and held in 1964, includes a text that sets forth the history of the group whose members were artists from the Japanese community in the State of São Paulo [see doc. no. 1110646

In addition to being one of the curators of the 1st São Paulo Biennial (1951), the art critic, historian and curator Walter Zanini was the first director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea [MAC] (linked to the Universidade de São Paulo [USP]). As director there from 1963 to 1978, Zanini made outstanding efforts to provide incentives for the work of new artists as well as for marginalized artwork of all kinds. This included technological approaches to Conceptual Art, with multimedia projects that were used to express visual poetics. He also taught at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA-USP).