Antropofagia, Primitivism and Anti-Primitivism

Primitivism has long been recognized as a driving force behind modernist currents in European art, yet the range of meanings encompassed by the term is not always clear. The Antropofagia movement in São Paulo provides an early example of engagement with the idea of primitivism from a non-European perspective. Although the Manifesto Antropófago (1928) is now widely known outside Brazil, it is most often taken at face value as an expression of anti-colonialist sentiment. The movement’s embrace of the ‘savage’ can only be fully understood in the context of discussions of primitivism and anti-primitivism. In the uneven encounters between Europe and Latin America, who gets to decide who is primitive, and why?

Prof. Dr. Rafael Cardoso is Art Historian and member of the Postgraduate Faculty in Art History (PPGHA) at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). As Associate Researcher of the Freie Universität Berlin (Lateinamerika-Institut) he currently works on the history of modernism in Brazil.

The lecture is part of the Lecture Series „Kulturforum – Forum der multiplen Modernen“ organized by the IAI.