This is a text for the exhibition “9 grabadores del Brasil” by Brazilian diplomat, poet, and essayist Alberto da Costa e Silva (b. 1931). It offers a general but complete panoramic view of the evolution of engraving in Brazil. This text undoubtedly provided an appropriate framework for the public of Caracas to understand the work of the young Brazilian engravers.
Da Costa e Silva studied at the Instituto Río Branco (associated with the Itamaraty, the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores [Ministry of Foreign Relations], and at the time of the exhibition, he was a member of Brazilian diplomatic corps. Contemporaneously while working as a diplomat, the author published poetry and assembled anthologies since 1953; it is not surprising then that this text offers exhaustive information on the evolution of Brazilian art. The exhibition contained works by such artists as Newton Cavalcanti, Rossini Pérez, and Roberto Magalhaes, among others; the author offers general commentary on their work. Many of these engravers were producing solid work in 1968, and early on Costa e Silva places them within the historical context of engraving in Brazil. The text also identifies fundamental moments within the evolution of Brazilian art: the artists of the sixteenth century that illustrated an unknown land, the works that nurtured the colonial imagination, the traveling engravers of the nineteenth century, folk engraving that relates local histories, the beginning of an academic tradition, the modern painter-engravers, and the contemporary graphic artists.
