Brazilian Art under Dictatorship

Brazilian Art under Dictatorship is a sophisticated analysis of the intersection of politics and the visual arts during the most repressive years of Brazil's military regime, from 1968 until 1975. Raised in Rio de Janeiro during the dictatorship, the curator and art historian Claudia Calirman describes how Brazilian visual artists addressed the political situation and opened up the local art scene to new international trends. Focusing on innovative art forms infused with a political undertone, Calirman emphasizes the desire among Brazilian artists to reconcile new modes of art making with a concern for local politics. Ephemeral works, such as performance art, media-based art, and conceptualism, were well suited to the evasion of censorship and persecution. Calirman examines the work and careers of three major artists of the period, Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles. She explores the ways that they negotiated the competing demands of Brazilian politics and the international art scene, the efficacy of their political critiques, and their impact on Brazilian art and culture. Calirman suggests that the art of the late 1960s and early 1970s represented not just the artists' concerns with politics, but also their anxieties about overstepping the boundaries of artistic expression.

"Brazilian Art under Dictatorship is a welcome contribution to a growing body of scholarly work about cultural production in Brazil under authoritarian rule. Through meticulous archival research, Claudia Calirman illuminates the work of three great experimental artists of the 1970s who pursued distinct artistic strategies. She succeeds in showing how, in their work, they responded to the specific context of censorship and violence in Brazil, while remaining engaged in an international dialogue about the changing politics of art in contemporary societies."—Christopher Dunn, author of Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture, “Calirman's examination of three artists - Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio and Cildo Meireles - helps to challenge the myth that the Brazilian dictatorship fostered only ‘cultural emptiness.’ Via letters and manifestos, exhibition reviews and descriptions of artworks, and interviews with artists and critics, she reveals the ephemeral, performative and clandestine artwork produced during the period. . . . Calirman breaks down myths about the absence of opposition to the Brazilian military regime and urges us to continue to examine the many forms of resistance in Cold War-era Latin America.”, “In Brazilian Art under Dictatorship, Claudia Calirman avoids the pitfall of geographic homogenization by profiling three quite distinctive artists who emerged in Rio de Janeiro toward the end of the 1960s. . . . Calirman's book is extremely well researched . . . [A]n interesting account of this little-known history, one that remains obscure even within Brazil.", “The book offers a broad overview of different works from the perspective of these three artists, all in a specific period of time in Brazil’s history. . . .Calirman takes us carefully through the art historical and cultural context of the artists’ engagements. Many of them continue to resonate today. . . .”, “This book makes a valuable contribution to scholarship about cultural production in Brazil under the military dictatorship, exploring as it does visual arts in the most repressive period of authoritarian rule from 1968-1975…. [The author] focuses on the innovative ideas of Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles whose work juggled political undercurrents and the artistic effort to respond to international artistic trends.”

Claudia Calirman is Assistant Professor of Art History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.