Return To Rio De Janeiro (1926-1936)
After returning from Europe and having experienced the modernist movement in Europe Di Cavalcanti would start working on a more Brazilian art, which Di Cavalcanti and the group who held the Semana de Arte already advocated in 1922. During this time he joined the Brazilian Communist Party due to the heightened nationalistic feelings he experienced during three years abroad. Di Cavalcanti embodies the problematic tendency of Brazilian modernists to be pulled in two directions: his subject matter consists of particularly Brazilian themes (mostly mulatto women), but his chief artistic influences are the European modernists and Pablo Picasso most of all.
In 1929, Di Cavalcanti also started to work on interior design, as seen in the two panels produced for the Teatro João Caetano ( João Caetano Theatre) in Rio de Janeiro. In 1930 he was involved in an exhibition of Brazilian art at the International Art Center at the Roerich Museum in New York. At this time he once again was involved with correspondence and magazines as he was the principal writer for the newly established magazine forma.
In 1932, another large group was established by Lasar Segall, Anita Malfatti, and Vitor Becheret which was the Sociedade Pró-Arter Moderna also known as SPAM. The goal of this group was to bring modernism to Brazilian art and follow in the footsteps of the Semana de Arte and encourage a revival of its ideas. On April 28, 1933 this group held the Exposição de Arte Moderna, which was the first exhibition to feature works produced by Picasso, Léger, and Braque, all of whom were know to the Brazilian people, but whose works had not been seen in the flesh before this exhibition. The exhibition pieces from the European masters were all borrowed from local Brazilian private collections. This exhibition was such a success that during the second showing in the fall many local Brazilian artists, including Di Cavalcanti and Candido Portinari, took part in the exhibition.
Di Cavalcanti would be jailed twice for his communistic beliefs and ties he undertook in prior years. He met his wife-to-be, painter Noêmia Mourão (he was previously married to his cousin Maria in 1921) after his first incarceration in 1932 for supporting Revolução Paulista. They married the following year and she became his traveling partner for the years to come until they both got jailed in 1936.
Read more about this topic: Emiliano Di Cavalcanti
Famous quotes containing the words return and/or rio:
“To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)