Displacement, Translation, Desire: Italian Art in Brazil during the Fascist Era

Fernanda Ferreira Marinho Camara

Padiglione Italiano all'Esposizione di São Paulo. Arch. Ettore Rossi (from La partecipazione italiana all’esposizione di San Paolo del Brasile 1937–XV, Rome 1939) — Padiglione Italiano all'Esposizione di São Paulo. Arch. Ettore Rossi (from *La partecipazione italiana all’esposizione di San Paolo del Brasile 1937*–XV, Rome 1939)

Padiglione Italiano all'Esposizione di São Paulo. Arch. Ettore Rossi (from *La partecipazione italiana all’esposizione di San Paolo del Brasile 1937*–XV, Rome 1939)

Early 20th-century modernism in Brazil was a vanguard reaction to more archaic academic traditions and trends thought not to represent a true national identity. The so-called Semana de Arte Moderna, which took place at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo during three days in February 1922, is widely considered by Brazilian historiography to be one of the founding landmarks of modernism. Having occurred in the same year as the centennial of Brazil’s independence, the Semana de 22 intended to mark a break with the old, aristocratic Brazil and to usher in the revolutionary artistic utopia of the new Brazil.
My project aims to consider Brazilian modernism from the point of view of its political-cultural relations with Italy during three different chronological and conceptual periods: 1) from the Semana de 22 until Getúlio Vargas’s seizure of dictatorial powers (1922–1937); 2) the dictatorship of Estado Novo (1937–1945), a period marked by the death of Mário de Andrade and the rise of a new generation disconnected from modernism (as represented by, for example, Gracilano Ramos); 3) from the interlude of the Vargas government, followed by his return to power in 1951, and his suicide in 1954, a period also distinguished by the industrial growth of São Paulo (1945–1954). These three periods of Brazilian modernism will be analyzed here through three Italian exhibitions in São Paulo: a) Nave Italia, on the Brazilian coast, specifically the port of Santos, in 1924; b) the Italian fascist pavilion within the Exhibition Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Official Immigration in São Paulo in 1937; c) L'Italia d'oggi exhibition during the celebrations of the fourth centenary of the city of São Paulo, in 1954. By recovering unpublished archive material on the relations between Brazilian modernism and the Italian fascist and post-fascist legacy, the study of these three events assumes crucial significance within the debates on the first centenary of the Semana de 22 and the bicentenary of Brazilian independence, both celebrated in 2022. With its focus on the relations between Brazil and Italy, my project will offer a new interpretation of modernism and also new perspectives in the discipline of art history.