brazil
1. Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world and also has the 5th largest population. It’s official language is Portuguese. Its national language is one of the many remnants from Brazil’s time as a Portuguese colony. Some of the other affects of colonization is the mix of Portuguese culture with native Brazilian culture. The population is also half white from Portuguese decedents. Music also has African influences due to slaves brought over by Portuguese settlers.
Brazil declared independence from Portugal in 1822 but afterward went through a monarchy, a military dictatorship and finally a democracy in 1945 when World War II ended. Brazil has move through various elected presidents without much hassle since then.
Starting around the 1950s Brazilian Artists started to move more into the modern art world. There was a very strong Concrete art movement in Brazil promoted by artists like Lygia Clark. Max Bill was also a huge influence for the concrete art movement in Brazil.
Currently Brazil is not a large international leader but has been increases in strength for some time. Some areas in Brazil as seen an increase in artist-run galleries and increase of art collectors in Brazil. Many people are hoping Brazil will become the ext big hub for the art world.
2. The Brazil Pavilion is in the Giardini della Biennale near Egypt’s Pavilion. The exhibition was curated by Luis Pérez-Oramas and titled “Inside/Outside”. The main theme of the exhibition was Brazil’s history with concrete art and the moebius strip. A moebius strip is basically a two dimensional object that exists in a three dimensional space. This object appears commonly in concrete art.
The five artists chosen for the exhibit are Max Bill, Bruno Munari, Lygia Clark, Helio fervenza and Odires Mlaszho. Two are these artists, Max Bill and Bruno Munari are not from Brazil. These two artists and Lygia Clark are also no longer alive. Only the other two artists were commissioned directly for this year’s pavilion.
The work by Max Bill is called Tripartite Unity. It was made in 1948-1949 and is made out of metal. This work was directly influenced by the moebius strip.
Bruno Munari’s sculpture: Concavo/converso made of a hung piece wire mesh was a huge success when it was created in 1948.
Lygia Clark’s work called Obra is made of rubber with the goal to for people to interact with it.
Helio fervenza’s method for creating work is very research heavy. For this exhibit he took photos of various objects he turned into moebius strips.
Odires Mlaszho had two different kinds of work for the exhibit. One kind was his usual collage work of blending human bodies together. The Other series is called Blind books, These sculptures are books intertwined together one page at a time.
3. This pavilion was very history orientated. It mainly focused on how Brazil became a part of modern and contemporary art after decolonization.
Max Bill’s and Bruno Munari were chosen because they created the concrete art movements in Europe. Lygia Clark was one of the first major concrete artists in Brazil, helping deloped concrete art within Brazil and than moving past it with neo-concrete art. I think that they were definitely picked to show that Brazil had already developed a transnational aspect to their work back in the 1950s.
They also separated these three artists from the other two by placing them in the first room and placing Helio fervenza and Odires Mlaszho in the next room. Showing the generation gap and how the art has changed since the 1950s.
But I think that this show wasn’t as successful as Brazil would have hoped. While Odires Mlaszho’s Blind Books seemed to be very successful, people didn’t have much to say about the books relation to Max Bill’s work or how it emphasis the idea of the moebius strip without directly replicating it. I think that Brazil was too introspective for this pavilion because of that transnationalism became overshadowed by their history.
4. Max Bill was born in 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland and died in 1994. He was an artist, architecture, typeface designer, and graphic designer. He was a main creator of concrete art. Concrete art is a style of art that heavily relies on logic and reason. It also aims to stay away from symbolic associations with reality. Max Bill never visited or taught art in Brazil, but many of his ideas of concrete art were brought to Brazil from Brazilian artists study art in Europe.
Bruno Munari was born in1907 in Milan, Italy, he died in Milan in 1998. He create sculptures, film, paintings and was a designer and inventor. He confounded the creation of concrete art in Italy.
Lygia Clark was born in 1920 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and died in 1998. She was the main pioneer of concrete art in Brazil, and later co-founded Neo-concrete art with Hélio Oiticica in 1959. Clark practiced making art in Paris in the 1950s to the 1970s, During this time she would visit Brazil to curate shows. Her first work started as drawings, then sculptures. She became more concerned with how the audience interacts with her work. Her sculpture Bichos were different planes that were connected by hinges allowing the viewer to change to the work to what they wanted.
Helio fervenza was born in 1963 in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Creates Text art, installations, film, prints and performances. He currently lives in Brazil and has been teaching for nineteen years at Art Institute of UFRGS.
Odires Mlaszho was born in 1959 in Parana, Brazil. He currently lives in New York. His realy name in Jose Odires Micowski but combined his name to Max Ernest and Laszlo Moholy-nagy to pay homage to them. He works in College.