Little remains of pre-Columbian art in Brazil.

Cave paintings in the state of Piaui date back at least as far as 8000 BC and there are remains of Marajoara pottery. Ancient traditions of indigenous body painting, pottery and feather art are still practised by native peoples, with some examples leaving the confines of ritual and utilitarian practice to enter the art market on their own terms, and have had noticeable influence on the work of such contemporary artists as Lygia Pape and also on popular events such as the carnaval, for example, yet indigenous art was largely absent from early modernist interest in ‘primitive art'.

Western input into the visual arts began in the 16th century with the arrival of Catholicism and the Jesuits teaching Christianity through religious imagery and importing Portuguese Baroque, which was to develop its own local face in different regions of Brazil such as Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Following less-successful attempts to enslave the indigenous population, many of whom died from European diseases, the African influence arrived with the West African slave trade. Fine examples of West African sculpture can be seen the northeast, and African ritual has an important place in many popular religions throughout Brazil.

The Neoclassical influence in Brazil developed after the French artistic mission to Brazil in 1816 on the invitation of the Portuguese court to establish a Royal School of Science, Arts and Offices, which later became the Imperial Academy of Fine Art, as the most important centre for the visual arts in the 19th century. French-influenced Neoclassicism and Realism continued into the early 20th century, while a growing influence of modernism led to the seminal 1922 Week of Modern Art in São Paulo as the seed for Brazilian modernism and the influence of European Cubism and Expressionism. After the Week of Modern Art, Brazilian modernism began to emphasise local cultural forms and a uniquely Brazilian identity in opposition to foreign cultural fashions.

Following the inauguration of the São Paulo Museum of Art in 1947, São Paulo Museum of Modern Art in 1948 and Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art in 1949, the 1950s saw the construction of Brasilia and the inauguration of the São Paulo Biennial, during a climate of democracy, relative prosperity and increased internationalism, which was echoed in the industry-inspired concrete art movement in São Paulo, founded strongly on European and Soviet constructivist principles of the 1920s, of a constructivist art participating in the construction of a technological society. Artists in Rio, in response to the hard-edged abstraction of concretism and archetypically seeking a more sensuous, poetic and less rigid approach, developed neo-concretism, which through the performance and interactive works of artists like Hélio Oiticia and Lygia Clark had its roots in the more ritualistic and performative elements of Brazilian culture.

The dark ages of the Brazilian dictatorships of the 1960s and 70s led to considerable repression of more liberal approaches in art and culture. Several visual artists and musicians went underground or into exile, while others found ways of subverting the repression through conceptualism.

Liberalisation of politics in the 1980s produced an important exhibition at the Parque Lage School of Art in Rio of the so called 1980s generation, "Geração 80", which revealed a new generation of artists now enjoying greater freedom, both politically and in experimental approaches to making art and a return to painting, breaking with the confines of academicism and 70s conceptualism and leading art in Brazil towards its future on the international stage.

Further reading:

The major exhibition Brazil Body and Soul, at the Guggenheim Museum New York in 2000, provided a comprehensive overview of the history of Brazilian art. The (literally) heavyweight catalogue has instructive essays and a wide range of illustrations. Extracts can be read on the Guggenheim Website

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