A reinvenção da Semana e o mito da descoberta do Brasil

Abstract

The 1922 Modern Art Week in São Paulo was enshrined as the starting point of Brazilian Modernism only in the 1940s. The article unfolds discussions on this reinvention by examining the writings of Tristão de Athayde, Lourival Gomes Machado, Luís Martins, Ruben Navarra, Robert C. Smith and Nestor Victor, among other critics. It also considers a methodological and epistemological parallel between two widely accepted origin myths generated at the time: the idea that the Modernist movement rediscovered a so-called ‘deep Brazil’, reclaiming blackness from its previous expunction, and the notion that Modernism is a recovery of Brazil’s colonial roots