ITALIANI SULL'OCEANO: STORIE DI ARTISTI NEL BRASILE MODERN AND INDIGENOUS ALLA METÀ DEL '900

The exhibition Italiani sull’Oceano: Storie di artisti nel Brasile modern and indigenous alla metà del ‘900, organized by MUDEC, explored the marks and assimilations produced by a group of Italians who immigrated to Brazil in the first half of the 20th century.

Gastone Novelli, Roberto Sambonet, Margherita Sarfatti, Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi were the names that made up the group whose trajectory is followed in this exhibition. For different reasons and with different expectations, the architect, critics and artists emigrated from Italy between 1930 and 1950 to settle in Brazil. These paths intersect with each other and with the new contexts found in the new country.

The group of Italians brought with them a rich cultural background, which caused major changes in the country’s still incipient artistic system. In this context, more malleable and free, they found the opportunity to broadly develop embryonic ideas that, in Italy, had no prospects for prospering. At the same time, they are faced with an enormous and diverse native culture, spread over a territory of continental dimensions.

The exhibition presented documents, images and objects that materialize the exchanges carried out between these personalities and the country they chose to settle. Temporary or definitive, the stay of these cultural workers in Brazil profoundly changed the meaning and intention of their productions, in addition to promoting fundamental transformations in the country’s cultural circuit.