Brazilian Avant-garde

All share the metaphor of chewing up an imported modernity and making it local, starting from a manifesto and reaching geometry, music and moving image alike.

Dictionary entry

  1. Neo-Concrete Art 1959–1966 / Style

    Releases geometric abstraction from a fixed visual order and opens the work to touching, moving and entering, so that it becomes an experience that changes as the body takes part.

  2. Tropicália mid-1960s– / Style

    Mixes vivid color, music, sand, plants, temporary structures and audience participation to criticize both the repression of military rule and the outsider's image of a 'tropical paradise.'

  3. Antropofagia 1928–1930s / Aesthetic

    A Brazilian programme that took cannibalism as its metaphor: do not refuse European culture, eat it and turn it into your own blood. Its affirmation of mixture as a method rather than a weakness has run underneath Brazilian design, music and architecture ever since.

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