A Semana da Arte Moderna de 1922 (The Week of Modern Art of 1922)

The week of Modern Art of 1922 was performed between 11th and 18th of February of 1922 in São Paulo at the City Theater(Teatro Municipal de São Paulo) and expected the presence of writers, intellectuals, painters, sculptors, architects and musicians. The main interest of this happening was to renew the artistic environment in Brazil. A production of a brazilian art more tuned to the european avant-gardes without lose its nationalistic character! After 100 years of Brazil's Independence, the young modernists wanted to "rediscover" the country and frees it from the foreign patterns. They used the "academicism" in the arts, influenced by the aesthetics and the movements as the Cubism, Expressionism and several other ramifications from the Post-Impressionists as the Divisionism (see Neo-Impressionism) as their guide. They planned to use those european models consciously for a renovation of the national art, concerned to make an art totally brazilian, without the inferiority complexes in relation to the art made in Europe. The artists involved in that Week are: Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Zina Aita, Társila do Amaral, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Ferrignac (Inácio da Costa Ferreira), Yan de almeida Prado, John Graz, Alberto Martins Ribeiro and Oswaldo Goeldi with paintings and drawings; Victor Brecheret, Hildegardo Leão Velloso and Wilhelm Haarberg with sculptures; Antônio Garcia Moya and Georg Przyrembel with architectonic projects; Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Menotti del Picchia, Sérgio Milliet, Plínio Salgado, Ronald de Carvalho, Álvaro Moreira, Renato de Almeida, Ribeiro Couto e Guilherme de Almeida a writers and musicians as Villa-Lobos, Guiomar Novais, Ernâni Braga e Frutuoso Viana.

The Week of Modern Art was just a consequence of the conflicts between the modernists and conservators. When Anita Malfatti came from Europe with her paintings and ideas from the new tendencies, she was criticized by the great writer Monteiro Lobato accusing her of not being faithful in describing the brazilian man and his nature, the comments were so heavy that insinuated that Malfatti was crazy. Oswald de Andrade, the writer and playwriter, also came from europe with new ideas and wrote two great manifestos but those were consequences of The Art Modern Week: First was called "Manifesto Pau-Brasil" 1924 which he says a "brazilian portuguese without archaism, without erudition. A great contribution for all the mistakes. How we speak. How we are." And a second one published in 1928, which was to oppose the conservator stream that was totally xenophobic and nationalistic, this manifesto was called The Manifesto Antrophagite. He criticizes the brazlian intellectuals and also the culture in the sense as we live in a third world country, we just assimilate ideas from the dominant countries instead of create them. Thus, what he proposes is not to deny any ideas from those countries but take the best and highest ideas and incorporate into our culture and uses it to create our own ideas.

The ideas of the week of Modern Art will be retaken later in the 60's to inluence again the students, politicians, young artists and mainly musicians, in special the Tropicalists.