Page 52 - DIVA 1 2025_web

brasil! brasil!

At a time when Brazil is ever more in the over four years of war, the country’s vitality was
public eye owing to the major role it is playing exhilarating.
in the ascendance of the BRICS community of
nations (it is represented by the initial “B” in the But Brazil’s greatest asset in this great leap
acronym), this impressive exhibit takes us back forward was to be the amazing heterogeneity
to a time when Brazil was also very much in the of its burgeoning population, given a boost by
eye of the entire world – and also very much in immigration from war-torn Europe. In addition
the ascendance – but for another reason. to a vast multitude of indigenous peoples, whose
art and culture were to enrich the development
Following the First World war and for over of modernism at every level, there was an equally
four subsequent decades, Brazil’s artists and vast population of western Africans, the heritage
architests rivaled – and often led – those of of the country’s long dependence on slave labor,
Europe and North America in developing the emancipated only in 1888. Their culture and
forms of artistic expression we now identify customs were also to serve as an abundant source
with the twentieth century and its steady – and of inspiration. To that was added the diversity of
sometimes brusque – move away from European Brazil’s population of European origin, for every
classical, academic formalism. Despite their nationality of Europe contributed to the mix.
prominence and enduring heritage, the role they
played in this pivotal evolution is little known In 1922, one of the country’s most influential
beyond South America. oligarchs, the coffee magnate Paulo Prado,
financed the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week
Subtitled “The Birth of Modernism”, the exhibit of Modern Art) transforming the country’s
at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern casts Brazil in economic center, São Paulo, into a capital of
the leading role at the center of what one might modern artistic movements as well. Rather
call the Western world’s great leap forward in the than a sudden beginning, the Semana was a
arts. And Brazil was uniquely positioned to play concentration of, and catalyst to, innumerable
this role. small experiments in new art forms taking place
throughout the country. The effect turned out
Europe was stunned by the unprecedented losses to be permanent, for it launched São Paulo as a
of life and treasure caused by the war, and the center of Brazil’s artistic world distinct from Rio
United States and its millionaire class were still de Janeiro, the capital, whose wealthy families
heavily under the influence of the French Beaux were still turned toward Europe.
Arts canons. Brazil, however, declared a republic
in 1889, was industrializing, its cities, especially In 1924, the Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars sketched
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, were coming into out a plan for a public relations film about Brazil
their own as significant urban centers, and the that would make Brazil known throughout the
economy was booming. After the grim days of world. Subsequently, in the 1920s, Paulo Prado

w w w. d i va i n t e r n at i o n a l . c h