In this essay, the well-known Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest attempts to assess national problems as they were understood by the most famous Brazilian artists, touching on a raw nerve concerning the differences between the art produced in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. In Brazil’s case, he says, art tends to draw its inspiration from the country’s indigenous, black, and Portuguese heritage; there is an unusual absence of Romantic-Naturalist forms due to the dominance of the French tradition. Romero Brest mentions the scant influence of the Italian tradition, and is surprised by the leap that painters took in the early twentieth century, from allegorical academicism to the controversial forms of the avant-garde. There is virtually no influence from Impressionism or its various derivatives, the Italian-Brazilian Impressionist painter Eliseu Visconti being the exception. This hearkens back to the social (not aesthetic) concerns that spawned the Nativist movement, meaning the reappraisal of black artists (begun by Visconti) which led to the rediscovery of Antonio Francisco de Lisboa (who was known as Aleijadinho). A national awareness was developing at that time, along with the aesthetic created by the modernist movement that came of age at the Semana de Arte Moderna de 1922. The critic believes that the major product of that fusion of aesthetic and social rebelliousness was the work of Cândido Portinari, which also acknowledged the country’s black culture. When comparing his work with the work of Di Cavalcanti, it would be impossible to ignore the European influence. According to Romero Brest, there was a tendency toward linear works, which he associates not only with the expressionist legacy of Lasar Segall but also with the academic influence; he also notices a lack of radical coloring. He thinks both Tarsila do Amaral and Alberto da Veiga Guignard were the “non-naïve” primitivists whose works are synthetic and well-thought-out, as distinct from Djanira’s painting. The essay ends with critical observations on the pictorial works of Clóvis Graciano.

This essay by the Argentinean author and art critic Jorge Romero Brest (1905–89) is about Brazilian painting in the first half of the twentieth century. He focuses on the connections between art and society as he discusses the works in the traveling exhibition 20 artistas brasileños, sponsored by the Museo de Bellas Artes de La Plata, Argentina, and organized by the Brazilian writer Marques Rebelo (1907–73), from August 2 through 19, 1945. The show was then taken to Buenos Aires where it was presented from August 25 through September 7, 1945. The participating artists included: Alcides da Rocha Miranda (1909−2001), Aldari Toledo (1915−2000), Roberto Burle Marx (1909−94), Cândido Portinari (1903−62), Cardosinho (1861−1947), Clóvis Graciano (1907–88), Di Cavalcanti (1897–76), Djanira (1914–79), Guignard (1896–1962), Hilda Campofiorito (1901−97), Iberê Camargo (1914–94), José Pancetti (1902–58), José Pedrosa (1915–2002), Milton Dacosta (1915–88), Orlando Teruz (1902–84), Percy Deane (1921−93), Quirino Campofiorito (1902–93), Santa Rosa (1909–56), and Tarsila do Amaral (1886–1973). Romero Brest, a leading modern art critic in Argentina, bases his comments on the ideas previously suggested by the critic Frederico Barata (1900−62) about the influence of the French academic tradition which, in Brazil, dates back to the imposition of the French Missão Artística led by Joachim Lebreton in the early nineteenth century. In his essay, Romero Brest also compares the thoughts of two other Brazilian modernist critics—Mário de Andrade (1893−1945) and Sérgio Milliet (1898−1966)—concerning the scope and impact of the generation involved in the Semana de 1922 [see doc. no. 781808] and their association with a socio-political movement that sought to create a national identity. He also identifies Portinari as a key figure in Brazilian modernism.