Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954) was the creative and intellectual pillar that supported the founding of the so-called Movimiento Antropófago; he contributed the cornerstone of the ideas and theories of this Brazilian modernist movement: the “Manifesto antropófago,” which was written in 1928, four years after its closest forerunner, the “Manifiesto Pau-Brasil.”
In this essay, published in the year he died (1954), the author restates the need for an evaluation of existing ideas about primitive people and of the symbolic concept of “anthropophagous devouring,” the central theme of his ideology. A decade later de Andrade’s ideas were updated by artists in Tropicalia, a popular Brazilian music movement that involved various arts.
[See the following articles by Oswald de Andrade in the ICAA digital archive: “Manifesto antropófago” (doc. no. 771303); “Mensagem ao antropófago desconhecido” (doc. no. 784801); “Um aspecto antropofágico da cultura brasileira” (doc. no. 842932); “Manifesto Pau-Brasil” (doc. no. 781051); “Pau-Brasil” (doc. no. 784909); ["’Pau-Brasil’, marca de fábrica…”] (doc. no. 784867); “A Marcha Das Utopias” (doc. no. 838902); “Péret” (doc. no. 1110367); “Aspectos da pintura através de ‘Marco Zero’” (doc. no. 783942); “Em prol de uma pintura nacional” (doc. no. 783886); and “Museu de arte moderna” (doc. no. 784030)].