Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text is on the work Pogrom by the painter Lasar Segall. In it, critic Geraldo Ferraz describes the work as “magnificent,” commenting on how the human figure is represented, as well as its compositional elements, and its pictorial unity. The [...]

In this article, the writer Murilo Mendes discusses the balance between social content and visual art values he sees in the paintings of Lasar Segall. Mendes underscores the artist’s independence from schools and aesthetic fashions, stating that [...]

This is a review of Poemas Negros, the book written by Jorge de Lima and illustrated by the painter Lasar Segall. The reviewer, Rubén Navarra, flatly considers Poemas Negros to be a “transcendental step” in modern Brazilian literature. He [...]

In this interview with Brazilian printmaker Lívio Abramo, art historian Vera d’Horta insists that the artist’s life story is essential in interpreting his fine and graphic artwork. Abramo speaks of his formative years in São Paulo, and explains [...]

This is an album of drawings and prints by Lasar Segall depicting the red light district in Rio de Janeiro known as “Mangue.” The album includes essays by the writers and poets Jorge de Lima, Mário de Andrade, and Manuel Bandeira. The first of [...]

This essay is about reaching a dead end in the nationalist project as well as the aesthetic requirements inherent in the avant-garde when modern art began to develop in Brazil. That development was launched with the 1917 exhibition by the painter [...]

This 82-page issue of Revista Acadêmica is devoted entirely to the painter Lasar Segall. There is a portrait of the artist on the cover of the magazine, and a tribute to him as he approaches the end of his long career. The issue includes articles [...]

This article—which appeared in 1939 during the III Salão de Maio held in São Paulo—reports on the statement made jointly by the sculptor Victor Brecheret and the painter Lasar Segall to the effect that they did not agree with the “trend” [...]

This is Abílio Miller’s review of the exhibition of works by the Lithuanian-born (nationalized Brazilian) painter Lasar Segall in 1913, after his first visit to Brazil and two months after his one-man show at a salon on São Bento street in São [...]

This article reports on the participation of Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, Ben Nicholson, and Giorgio Morandi in the special galleries of the IV São Paulo Biennial in 1958, as well as the large Brazilian delegation that included works by Lithuanian [...]

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 [...]

This article considers the work produced by the Lithuanian-born painter Lasar Segall as it explores the question of how “Africanism” became part of the local identity in Latin America following the emergence of modernism. Jorge Schwartz [...]

In this article, Oswald de Andrade claims there is an urgent need to create a modern art museum in the city of São Paulo, underscoring the fragile nature of and almost nonexistent institutional support for the Brazilian art system. De Andrade [...]

Oswald de Andrade was invited by the American Contemporary Arts to give this lecture in São Paulo in 1944, in which he discusses the two characters he created for a series of novels (that was never completed) entitled Marco Zero. He used these [...]

Gilberto Freyre, the sociologist from Pernambuco, discusses the I Congresso Afro-Brasileiro, held in Recife in 1934. Freyre briefly refers to comments and discussions concerning the viability of the meeting and the informality of the event, among [...]

SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna) was founded in December 1932 in São Paulo. Its stated goals were to create closer artistic ties, and relationships between artists and the public. The catalogue for the SPAM 1ª Exposição de Arte Moderna includes [...]

This essay by the painter Lasar Segall, which was published in the book entitled A comunidade judaica no Brasil, includes excerpts from two of his earlier essays about Jewish artists and their work, written in 1939 and 1940. Segall’s use of the [...]

The exhibition of works by the painter Lasar Segall at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro (1943), under the auspices of the recently-opened Ministério da Educação e Saúde, was the largest show the Lithuanian-born artist had ever [...]

This text was originally published in German in the catalogue for a 1926 exhibition on [the work of] Lasar Segall at the Staatliche Kunstsamlungen Dresden. Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, the director of this municipal museum in Dresden at the time, compares [...]

This essay was included in the catalogue for the Exposição de Pintura Brasileira held in London in 1944. Organized by the critic Rubén Navarra, the show presented a broad selection of Brazilian paintings that covered the transition from the 1930s [...]

In his essay, critic Sérgio Milliet analyzes the painting taking place in São Paulo at the end of the 1930s, with an eye toward two exhibitions: the first, at the II Salão de Maio and the other, at the Salão do Sindicato dos Artistas Plásticos ( [...]

In this brief account, critic Paulo Mendes de Almeida surveys the origins, contributions, and the objectives of SPAM (Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna), which was founded in São Paulo by artists, critics and collectors to strengthen connections between [...]

This anonymous article reports on the painter Lasar Segall’s second trip to Brazil, when he settled in São Paulo. Segall is described as “a confirmed expressionist” and an “ardent supporter of the modern art movement” which, according to [...]

In April 1942, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] at the Teatro Municipal in São Paulo in 1922, Mário de Andrade gave a talk at the library of the Ministério das Relações [...]

The catalogue for the Exposição de uma casa modernista was written by the architect Gregori Warchavchik, creator of this radical project. Although it was controversial in the conservative milieu of the period, the project was fairly significant in [...]

After criticizing the selection made in the United States to represent Brazil at the Latin American Exhibition of Visual Arts that was held in New York during the 1939 World’s Fair, the great Brazilian polymath, Mário de Andrade continues by [...]

This is the program for the carnival party sponsored by the Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna(SPAM) in February 1934, an event that was also referred to as the Grande Expedição às Matas Virgens da Spamolândia [Great Expedition to the Virgin Jungles of [...]