Brazilian Painting
In the late sixteenth century, Brazilian painting in the true sense of the term began to emerge. Brazilian painting was largely influenced by the Baroque style that was imported from Portugal. This was the dominant school of painting in Brazil until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it flourished through out all of the settled territories. The primary centers of flourishing Baroque painting were located along the coast but there were also a few important inland centers like Minas Gerais.
The most influential Brazilian Baroque painter was Manuel da Costa Ataide, who worked around the end of the eighteenth century and was the head of the first original school of painting in the country. He had a style that was a delicate and fairly personal interpretation of Rococo painting. May of his works depicted angels and saints, but with mulato features. Some of the other major painters of this era were Ricardo do Pilar, Jose Teofilo, Jose Joaquim da Rocha, Joaquim Jose da Natividade, Manuel de Jesus Pinto, Jose Eloy, Joao de Deus Sepulveda, and Manuel da Cunha.
When the Portuguese court arrived in Brazil in 1808, there was a strong break in the Brazilian painting tradition away from the Baroque style. Thought the arrival of the Portuguese court did introduce many new styles and schools of painting to Brazil, the Baroque painting style did survive in many places until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1816, the King John VI supported the creation of a national academy at the suggestion of some French artists. This group was led by Joachim Lebreton, and the group later became known as the French Artistic Mission. Ths group was instrumental in introducing the Neoclassical style aswell as a new concept of artistic education that mirrored the European academies. They were also the first teachers of the newly founded school of art. The school was originally called the Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts and was later renamed the Imperial Academy of Fine arts. Over the next seventy years it dictated the standards of art, mixing trends of Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism as well as nationalist inclinations which became the basis for the production of a large amount of canvases that depicted the nation’s history, landscapes, battle scenes, portraits, and still lives.
When the monarchy was abolished in 1889, the new republican government renamed the Imperial Academy the National School of the Fine Arts. However, this newly named school was short lived and was absorbed in 1931 by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, Modernism began to be cultivated in Sao Paulo. This new trend actually superseded Academicism and in 1922 an art festival called Week of Modern Art shook up the academic tradition. This nationalist trend was also influenced my Primitivism, European Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Another important period was that between the years of 1950 and 1970, when many new styles, like action painting, Neoconconcretism, Lyrical Abstraction, Neo-expressionism, Neorealism, and Pop Art all emerged.