Ocupação Mario Pedrosa [english]

on the left Mario Pedrosa at his apartment photo Luciano Martins Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

Editorial coordination Carlos Costa Text editing Duanne Ribeiro William Nunes Editorial board Caio Meirelles Aguiar, Laerte Matias Fernandes, Marcos Augusto Gonçalves, Naiade Margonar e/and Quito Pedrosa Book design and layout Estúdio Claraboia Editorial production Luciana Araripe Proofreading coordination Polyana Lima Proofreading Karina Hambra e/and Rachel Reis (outsourced) Translation Guilherme Ziggy (outsourced) Translation proofreading Denise Yumi (outsourced)

Mario Pedrosa, 1959 photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

“It is said that when he [Mario Pedrosa] returned from France, he was influenced by the concept of franc-parler – speaking openly, frankly; engaging in frank debates.

He had this tendency to be very frank in expressing his ideas, while also being open to different ideas,” said Quito Pedrosa, musician, researcher, and Mario’s grandson, in one the recorded interviews for this edition – the 60th – of the Ocupação Itaú Cultural, which pays tribute to the art critic, political militant, writer, and intellectual.

Indeed, Mario Pedrosa (1900-1981) always expressed himself attentively, combatively, and generously on the many areas that shaped his trajectory and activities. He made significant contributions to the realms of art and politics, but above all, to the understanding of Brazil’s identity and critical social thought.

In this publication, we have invited scholars to analyze Mario’s production through five central axes. Professor José Castilho Marques Neto discusses the political militancy of the honoree, from his participation on the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) to his engagement in labor struggles, influenced by the thoughts of Leon Trotsky. Artist, curator, and researcher Marcio Doctors then writes about the critic’s relationships with artists and artistic movements, highlighting his revolutionary and modernist spirit.

Architect and urban planner Sabrina Fontenele addresses his contribution to Brazilian modern architecture and the construction of Brasília,

topics that were prominent in his articles mainly in the 1950s. Researcher Luiza Mader analyzes Mario’s museological thinking, supported by his management and proposal for museums as spaces for culture and education. Lastly, curator Pollyana Quintella synthesizes the work of one of the most important art critics of the 20th century.

Quito and Marcos Augusto Gonçalves – consultant and curator, respectively, of the Ocupação Mario Pedrosa – also contribute texts that highlights the honoree’s unique trajectory. Mario, a citizen of the world and restless spirit, stimulated reflection on art and politics in Brazil and influenced a whole generation of great artists. His theoretical and critical production continues to be the subject of research and studies that contribute to the national debate.

Access other content about Mario Pedrosa on the Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural (enciclopedia.itaucultural. org.br) and on the Ocupação program website (itaucultural.org.br/ocupacao). Enjoy your reading!

Itaú Cultural

13 A singular trajectory Quito Pedrosa

33 An indomitable life José Castilho Marques Neto

51 The challenge of Pedrosa, or the radicality of the real Marcio Doctors

71 Mobile Mario Marcos Augusto Gonçalves

83 Architectures and modernities: from the search for origins to the utopia of Brasília Sabrina Fontenele

97 Museums as cultural and educational spaces Luiza Mader

113 Criticism in permanent revolution Pollyana Quintella

136 Credits and acknowledgments

singular

A trajectory

Quito Pedrosa

QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

Mario at the age of 13, before his departure to Switzerland, 1913 photo Unknown author

The challenge I have ahead is to summarize in a few lines the story of Mario Pedrosa, my grandfather. A singular man with diverse interests.

Affectionately connected to his homeland, yet with an intellectual curiosity that transcended conventional borders. An internationalist who fought on several political and cultural fronts and made friends in every country he visited.

My grandfather was born on April 25, 1900, at the dawn of a century in a world undergoing unprecedented transformation. One could say he was born amidst the ruins of a colonial past and the archetypal construction of that past: a engenho [sugar mill] in the state of Pernambuco.

His father, Pedro, a lawyer and politician from the Old Republic, was born into poverty. His mother, Antonia, was his father’s cousin, but from a wealthier branch of the family.1 Mario spent his childhood between the sugar mill and the capital of Paraíba. He studied in Catholic schools and, due to his restless behavior, was sent to Belgium at the age of 13 to study at a Jesuit school. The intention was to discipline him, but the outbreak of the World War I prevented him from reaching

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1. Editor’s note: Two texts in this publication complementarily describe the social situation of Mario Pedrosa’s ancestry. As emphasized here, his father came from a humble background, while his mother came from a more affluent condition, as indicated in José Castilho’s article.

QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

his intended destination. Instead, he traveled to Switzerland, where he enrolled in a Protestantoriented institute. This is an example of the course changes that would ultimately divert Mario from the natural path that seemed to lie ahead of him.

Upon returning from Europe at the age of 16, he went to Rio de Janeiro, where his father held the position of senator for Paraíba. Instead of being tempered, Mario’s restless temperament was further accentuated by the experiences he gained. Prior to entering college, he frequented the modern social circles of the city, including cafes, taverns, and the galleries of the Theatro Municipal. Music was his great passion during those times, and among his peers were writer Murilo Mendes and painters Di Cavalcanti and Ismael Nery. At the age of 18, he enrolled in Law School and began to take an interest in social issues and Marxism. He joined a group centered around Professor Castro Rebello, which included journalist Lívio Xavier, who would become a constant interlocutor and lifelong friend. It was Lívio who introduced him to Arinda Houston’s2 home, where the cream of modern composers

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2. Or Arinda Malta de Galdo, the name she resumed using after separating from her husband. We chose to use Arinda Houston because that was how she was known by modernist authors, such as Mario de Andrade.

and musicians such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Heckel Tavares, gathered, as well as Arinda daughters Elsie Houston, a singer and researcher who would become an important connection between Mario and European intellectual and artistic circles. One of Elsie’s sisters was Mary, my grandmother.

The modern spirit that reigned during those years was fertile with ideas and liberating in terms of behavior. Those young people were committed to building a new country, a new written language, and new musical or artistic forms that broke away from academicism and submission to European neoclassical ideals. Despite appearing contradictory, the formula for rupture came from the same Europe where artists and intellectuals discovered the art and culture of peoples from all four continents. This transformation influenced the painting, sculpture, and music they created, as well as their perception of reality. At the same time, the need to transform this reality awakened a desire for revolution and the search for utopias. It was this sentiment that led Mario to join the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) in 1925, just three years after it was founded in the Brazil.

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A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY QUITO PEDROSA

The couple Mary Houston and Mario Pedrosa in Bombay, India, 1959 photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

In the following years, he would move to São Paulo and dedicate himself to militancy and work at the newspaper Dário da Noite [Daily Evening], where he wrote literary reviews. It was there that he becomes close to the writer Mário de Andrade.

He also returned to Paraíba and contributed with the newspaper A União [The Union]. In 1927, as repression against communism intensified, the party decided to send him to study at the Leninist School in Moscow.

When Mario arrives in Berlin, he falls ill. Unable to proceed to the Soviet Union, he becomes involved in the German Communist Party (KPD) and comes into contact with the theses of the Left Opposition – an organization led by the revolutionary Leon Trotsky that proposed alternative paths to international communism from those of the USSR. His disagreements with the direction of communism, already expressed in letters to Lívio Xavier, lead him to decide not to go to Moscow. He remains in Berlin and Paris over the next two years.

In the French capital, Mario attends the wedding of Elsie Houston and poet Benjamin Péret, through whom he meets the group of surrealist artists,

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becoming friends with André Breton and Yves Tanguy, among others.

Throughout these final years of the 1920s, he writes articles about Villa-Lobos and Mário de Andrade, as well as many others with a political focus. Together with Lívio Xavier, he also writes an essay that will be considered the first Marxist analysis of Brazil’s social formation, titled “Esboço de análise da situação brasileira” [Outline of Analysis on the Brazilian Situation].

Mario Pedrosa’s return to Brazil occurs on the eve of the so-called Revolution of 1930, through which Getúlio Vargas came to power, and the following years are marked by intense activism alongside labor unions. Mario and his group end up being expelled from the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) and create the country’s first Trotskyist formation. With the rise of integralism, a fascistinspired movement, he becomes involved in the creation of the Frente Única Antifascista (FUA) and the editor of the group’s newspaper, O Homem Livre [The Free Man]. Within its pages, he writes various texts on cinema and politics. It is

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A singular man with diverse interests. Affectionately connected to his homeland, yet with an intellectual curiosity that transcended conventional borders.

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in this space that he publishes what is considered his debut in art criticism with the article “As tendências sociais da arte de Käthe Kollwitz” [The Social Tendencies of Käthe Kollwitz’s Art] in 1934. That same year, FUA engaged in a direct confrontation with the integralists on the streets of São Paulo, in an episode known as the Battle of Praça da Sé, where he was shot.

During these years, Mario and Mary, who were living and militating together, faced their first arrests. In 1936, their only daughter, Vera, my mother, was born. In the following years, repression escalated brutally, forcing my grandfather into hiding. With the imposition of the Estado Novo [New State] dictatorship, the situation became untenable. Mario traveled to France to attend the founding congress of the Fourth International, an organization that brought together Trotskyist movements from various parts of the world. He arrives in Paris the day after Leon Sedov, Trotsky’s son, was assassinated by Stalinist agents. In Brazil, my grandmother Mary was arrested and spent the next seven months in detention alongside other political prisoners of the Estado Novo regime, such as the writer and

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QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

activist Patrícia Rehder Galvão, known as Pagu, and the psychiatrist Nise da Silveira.

It is indeed a period of great suffering for the family. Finally, my grandmother is released on the condition that she leaves the country. She and my mother then travel by ship to the United States, where my grandfather was already residing, along with the leadership of the Fourth International, who had flee Paris due to the advance of Nazi troops. The following seven years would be marked by exile and difficulties, as the world faced the horrors of World War ll. The exile of my grandparents and my mother would leave a lasting impact on their lives.

After a clash with Trotsky himself and disagreements within the Trotskyist movement, my grandfather is removed from the leadership of the Fourth International. In an attempt to promote the thesis that he advocated, he embarks on a journey back to Brazil by land, traveling through various South American countries and meeting with Trotskyist leaders. However, as soon as he arrives in Brazil, he is once again arrested and deported.

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Back in the United States, Mario begins to write articles about art and collaborates with various publications. He becomes friends with the American sculptor Alexander Calder.

Immersed in the company of intellectuals and artists, many of them refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, he also dedicates himself to deepening his studies in philosophy, art history, and psychology, which he had informally begun at the University of Berlin in the late 1920s. The family resides in New York for a while and then in Washington.

Elsie Houston, who is also based in the United States, performs recitals at venues like Le Ruban Bleu and the Rainbow Room, frequented by artists and musicians from the New York avant-garde scene. She would tragically take her own life in 1943, and this event, besides being deeply painful for my grandparents, seems to mark the end of an era characterized by utopias and revolutions, by the struggle of a more just world. Elsie, who had been considered one of the most important Brazilian singers and musicians of the 1920s and 1930s, would be forgotten by history. However, the

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A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY QUITO PEDROSA

from left to right

Mary Houston, u.d. photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

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Mario Pedrosa’s passport, circa 1950s collection Fundação Biblioteca Nacional Mario Pedrosa with his family, 1935 photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

power of her work and her personality leads us to believe that her memory will be recovered.

The war ends, and a political amnesty allows my family to return to Brazil. This marks the beginning of a period in which Mario dedicates himself fully to two projects. On one hand, he collaborates in the creation of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ) and in São Paulo (MAM/SP).

On the other hand, he engages in the formation of a new left-wing political path, which results in the founding of the Partido Socialista. He also creates and directs the weekly Vanguarda Socialista [Socialist Vanguard], which will be influential in shaping a generation of Brazilian intellectuals.

In the field of arts, he establishes the plastic arts column in Correio da Manhã [Morning Courier].

The second half of the 1940s is a period of consolidation for Mario’s as an art critic. His advocacy for abstract and concrete art will be significant for the development and recognition of artists and movements that are now considered the most important Brazilian contribution to the international art scene. At the same time, he writes essays and theses and gives lectures on

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various topics. Some of them are dedicated to acknowledging the importance of such as those of Nise da Silveira and visual artist Almir Mavignier at the arts workshop of the Centro Psiquiátrico Pedro II in Engenho de Dentro, Rio de Janeiro, as well as the efforts of visual artist Ivan Serpa to expand the role of the museum through courses for children.

As a founding member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), Mario also operates on the international stage and participates in the organization of some of the most important editions of the Bienal de São Paulo. His constant and frank dialogue with artists and intellectuals turns his apartment in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, into a meeting point and venue for discussions and debates. Different groups take turns engaging in lively conversations. His articles stimulate experimentation but also promote the study of authors who were previously unfamiliar to Brazilian readers. His actions foster greater interaction between Brazilian artists and intellectuals and the global art scene and their foreign counterparts in the country.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the cultural effervescence in Brazil would, as it cyclically

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QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

happens, be interrupted by the civil and miliary coup of 1964. After the coup, Mario dedicates himself to writing an extensive essay, which would eventually be published in two separate books: A opção brasileira [The Brazilian Option] and A opção imperialista [The Imperialist Option].

This dense political work deserves to be revisited, especially considering that we still haven’t overcome the cyclical occurrences of coups that hinder our growth and independent development.

It didn’t take long for the coup to result in the persecution of leftist thought and political freedom. Once again, my grandfather is prosecuted and forced to leave the country.

This time, his exile began in Chile, where he was involved in the creation of a space that would later become the Museu da Solidariedade. However, in 1973, the coup led by General Augusto Pinochet forced my grandfather into hiding and seeking asylum at the Mexican embassy. At the age of 73, and with his health somewhat compromised, Mario embarks on another journey until he reaches Paris, where we would stay until the political amnesty of 1977.

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After his return to Brazil, he had two reasons to continue his struggle both in the political and cultural fields: the creation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), to which he devoted himself with enthusiasm and renewed hope, and the preparation of a major exhibition on indigenous art, jointly conceived with the visual artist Lygia Pape for MAM/RJ. For some time, my grandfather had felt the exhaustion of the modern art cycle and believed that reflecting on indigenous people would show us how to find our own independent path. However, the fire at MAM in Rio in 1978, on the eve of the exhibition, prevented its realization. Mario then joined the reconstruction efforts and proposed the creation of the Museu das Origens, an idea that still holds the power to revolutionize the structures of our cultural institutions.

After returning to their apartment in Ipanema, Mario and Mary continued to receive friends for conversations on various topics. Mario remained devoted to readings and writing until the end of his life. Mary completed a 20-year project on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. My grandfather passed away in October 1981 in Rio de Janeiro, and my grandmother Mary in 1984 in Paris.

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QUITO PEDROSA A SINGULAR TRAJECTORY

Admiration and affection surrounding his name grows every day, and every time someone has the opportunity to learn about his life and work.

Quito Pedrosa is a composer, saxophonist, and guitarist, who also works in visual arts, photography, and poetry.

He has organized chronologies about his grandfather for publications such as Mario Pedrosa: Primary Documents, edited by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and De la naturaleza afectiva de la forma [On the Affective Nature of Form], by the Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. He also collaborates on various other initiatives related to Mario Pedrosa’s legacy.

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Mario Pedrosa, his grandson Quito, and his daughter Vera Pedrosa collection Pedrosa family

An life

indomitable

José Castilho Marques Neto

JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

Mario Pedrosa in a passport photo photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

1. The man, the militant, the art critic “But the necessary optimism, the intellectual limitation, this is where I can’t go.” This is how Mario Pedrosa wrote to his friend Lívio Barreto Xavier in a letter from 1925,3 after the beginning of his long political and socialist militancy that would only end with his death in 1981.

At the age of 25, Pedrosa, as an intellectual, felt a moral obligation to engage in revolutionary party militancy. At the same time, the party that would shelter him in his fight for socialist revolution imposed very strict rules of complete submission to the decisions of the majority or the political leadership. Added to this was the revolutionary imperative of permanent optimism, the idea of the inevitable triumph of the people’s revolution.

The young militant of the Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) struggled with this complex framework. The party had been founded only three years earlier, in 1922, inspired by the triumphant Bolshevik Party – the leader of the equally young Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), born in the same year as a result of the civil war that

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3. For reference, see: MARQUES NETO, J. C. Solidão revolucionária: Mário Pedrosa e as origens do trotskismo no Brasil. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2022. p. 253.

JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

arose in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution, also known as the Russian Revolution or Soviet Revolution. Like his entire generation, Mario Pedrosa experienced the birth and infancy of the political system that revolutionized politics itself and polarized the entire 20th century.

Divided between militant enthusiasm - inspired by the revolution that overthrew one of the most powerful and cruel monarchies on the planet - and his vibrant and overwhelming capacity for criticism and intellectual formulation, Pedrosa never settled into the comfort of opportunistic political positions.

On the contrary, until the end of his life, he always opted for sharp criticism and the persistence of his autonomous, restless, and creative intelligence in service of what he understood as more just and precise for the triumph of socialist ideas and the workers emancipation.

The personal integrity in which he acted on politics extended to his work as an art critic, opening new perspectives for the analysis of Brazilian and international arts. His debut as a critic was in 1933, in a famous conference he gave about the German visual artist Käthe Kollwitz, who portrayed

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in her drawings, prints and paintings the degrading human condition in which the most oppressed classes lived in the first half of the 20th century.

It should be noted that, while navigating through art criticism since the 1930s, Pedrosa also distanced himself from the obligatory reverence of that period, which evaluated artworks exclusively based on their social dimension, as dictated by the view of a primary Marxism known as Socialist Realism. Extending his gaze beyond the content of the artworks, he also analyzed them by the problems of form, delving into gestalt psychology, a theory about human perception. In 1949, he wrote a thesis recognized both in Brazil and abroad on gestalt analysis in art, titled “Da natureza afetiva da forma na obra de arte” [On the Affective Nature of Form in the Work of Art], which remained largely unpublished until 1979 when it was included, along with other writings, in the book Arte, forma e personalidade [Art, Form, and Personality] by the extinct publisher Kairós.

If Pedrosa was a pioneer in the perspective of leftwing politics in Brazil, he also was one with his keen observation and solid theoretical argumentation

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JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

regarding the arts. Recognized by scholars, his innovative vision, among other qualities, marked and continues to mark Brazilian and international art criticism, serving as an unquestionable reference to this day. His originality in critical methodology, which worked from the perspective of international artistic tendencies and local reality, left a lasting impact on the Brazilian and international art scene.

With all his significant contributions to politics and art criticism, Pedrosa emerged as an icon of Brazilian intelligence and guiding light for a wide range of intellectuals, artists, and politicians. As sociologist Luciano Martins, who was also his sonin-law and lived with him for 30 years, put it: “Mario Pedrosa was not just a person. He was also an intellectual phenomenon and almost an institution.”4 2. A life in motion It is worth briefly exploring the key moments of Pedrosa’s life. I invite the reader to engage in a exercise of temporal displacement while following this rich and eventful journey, keeping in mind that our character, born in 1900, did not experienced the internet and technology, nor the ease of modern

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4. See: MARTINS, Luciano. A utopia como modo de vida – fragmentos de lembrança de Mario Pedrosa.

In: MARQUES NETO, J. C. Mario Pedrosa e o Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2001.

Available in: bit.ly/mariopedrosaeobrasil.

Accessed in Mar, 27, 2023.

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Mario Pedrosa, Lélia Abramo, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda at the National Meeting for the Foundation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) at Colégio Sion, 1980 photo Juca Martins/olhar imagem

AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

JOSÉ CASTILHO

Divided between militant enthusiasm – inspired by the revolution that overthrew one of the most powerful and cruel monarchies on the planet – and his vibrant and overwhelming capacity for criticism and intellectual formulation, Pedrosa never settled into the comfort of opportunistic political positions.

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communication. He only witnessed the advent of commercial jet aircraft from 1958 onwards.

By undertaking this exercise, we can better understand the strength and determination of this intrepid internationalist traveler, endowed with an incredible ability to connect and communicate in an era with limited technological resources.

Mario Xavier de Andrade Pedrosa – that was his full name – was born in Engenho Jussara [Jussara Estate], in the district of Cruangi, in Timbaúba, state of Pernambuco. He came from an wealthy5 family, and his father, Pedro da Cunha Pedrosa, a lawyer, was a senator of the Republic and minister of the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU).

In 1913, he was sent by his family to Switzerland to study at the Institut Quiche in Château de Vidy, Lausanne, where he stayed until 1916 when he returned to Brazil. In 1919, he entered the Faculdade de Direito do Rio de Janeiro, remaining there until 1923. He joined the PCB in 1925 and went to Paraíba, where he was appointed as a fiscal agent. In 1927 he left the state and moved to São Paulo, taking responsibility for the party’s section

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5. Editor’s note: As we also mentioned in Quito Pedrosa’s text, this is one way to describe Mario Pedrosa’s social background, with his mother coming from a wealthier family and his father from a more humble background.

JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

that provided material and legal assistance to imprisoned or politically persecuted communists, the Socorro Vermelho [Red Aid]. Around the same time, he worked for the Diário da Noite [Daily Evening] newspaper. Also in 1927, he traveled to Moscow, where, as assigned by the PCB, he was supposed to attend the International Lenin School, an institution of the Communist International focused on training militant leaders for the international socialist evolution.

However, while in Berlin on his way to Moscow, Pedrosa contracted an infection. This event, which caused a brief delay on his voyage, along with other circumstances and political reflections he had been developing in Brazil, led him to stay in the German capital. There, he attended philosophy and sociology courses and engage in militant activities within the German Communist Party (KPD).

During this period, Pedrosa traveled frequently to Paris, establishing close relationships with militants from the Oposição de Esquerda, a tendency that opposed Stalinism and proposed alternative directions for communism. He particularly connected with Pierre Naville, then director of La Lutte de Classes [Class Struggle] magazine, which replaced

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Mario Pedrosa, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a meeting for the creation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) at Colégio Sion, 1979 photo Wagner Avancini/n imagens

JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

Clarté [Clarity], a publication that Pedrosa extensively utilized during his intellectual development. He also maintained relations with the French surrealists, especially Benjamin Péret, who married Elsie Houston in 1928. Elsie Houston was a friend of Pedrosa and would later become his sister-in-law after Pedrosa’s marriage to Mary Houston. It was during this period that a clear oppositionist perspective towards the leadership of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and the directives of the Communist International began to take shape, reflecting analyses already outlined by Pedrosa and his political group.

Pedrosa returned to Brazil in July 1929 and led the organization of the first leftist opposition group in the country, the Grupo Comunista Lenin (GLC), founded in 1930. The group’s spokesperson was the newspaper A luta de classes [Class Struggle].

Until 1940, Pedrosa actively participated in the labor and political struggles led by Trotskyist supporters, playing a leading role in the Brazilian and the international scenes. He was one of the founders of the Internationalist Communist League (LCI) in 1931 and the Partido Operário Leninista (POL) in 1936. In 1938, he became the

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representative of the Latin American sections at the conference that gave birth to the Fourth International, an organization that led the internationalist struggle of communists who opposed Joseph Stalin’s policy in the USSR and his domination over national communist parties.

At this conference, he was appointed as responsible for Latin America on the Executive Committee, based in New York. He ended up getting involved in the discussion about the unconditional defense of the USSR. This slogan, imposed by Leon Trotsky, led to a crisis in the American section of the Fourth International and intensified after the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the invasion of Finland. Alongside Max Shachtman, an American Trotskyist leader, Mario drafted a document that raised objections to Trotsky’s line. In 1940, Trotsky reorganized the secretariat of the Fourth International, and Pedrosa was excluded.

Upon returning to Brazil, Pedrosa was arrested and expelled from the country along with Mary Houston. They sought refuge in Washington and New York, where he worked respectively at the Pan-American Union and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA).

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JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

In 1945, when he was able to return to Brazil, Pedrosa founded the weekly Vanguarda Socialista [Socialist Vanguard], which, with the emergence of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB) and the affiliation of Mario Pedrosa and his comrades, was handed over to the party’s leadership. In 1946, his political activity became more intense and continued until 1966, during which he made numerous international trips to organize museums and art exhibitions. During this period he also taught at the Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Brasil – now Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) – and Colégio Pedro II, as well worked as a journalist for Correio da Manhã [Morning Courier] and Jornal do Brasil [Brazil’s Journal], among other newspapers.

Pedrosa’s wrote two books on politics in 1964, A opção imperialista [The Imperialist Option] and A opção brasileira [The Brazilian Option], which were published in 1966 when he ran for Congress for the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB) in Rio de Janeiro. In 1968, while attending the mass for a student murdered by the dictatorship at the Calabouço [Dungeon] Restaurant in 1968, he suffered an ischemic episode that temporarily prevented him from engaging in any activities.

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In 1970, Pedrosa, along with eight other companions, was prosecuted on charges of defaming Brazil abroad with allegations of torture and human rights violations. After seeking asylum at the Chilean embassy for three months, he settled in Chile during the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who entrusted him with organizing the Museum of Solidarity, featuring works by prominent international artists. With the military coup that overthrew Allende, Pedrosa sought refuge in Mexico and then went to Paris, where he stayed for four years and wrote another political book, A crise mundial do imperialismo e Rosa Luxemburgo [The World Crisis of Imperialism and Rosa Luxemburg].

In Brazil, at that time, a collection of his articles titled Mundo, homem, arte em crise [World, Man, Art in Crisis] was published. In 1977, he returned to the country and was tried by the Auditoria da Marinha, being unanimously absolved. In 1979, his pioneering thesis on the relationship between gestalt and art was published in Arte, forma e personalidade [Art, Form and Personality], as mentioned before.

In 1980, Pedrosa published an pamphlet with his famous “Carta aberta para um líder operário” [Open

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AN INDOMITABLE LIFE JOSÉ CASTILHO

National Meeting for the Foundation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) at Colégio Sion, 1980 photo Juca Martins/olhar imagem

JOSÉ CASTILHO AN INDOMITABLE LIFE

Letter to a Labor Leader], addressed to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He also collaborated on the foundation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), having signed the membership form number one. He passed away on November 5, 1981, internationally acclaimed as one of Brazil’s greatest art critics and political activists.

His final political activity, celebrated in the creation of the PT, deeply marked him because it represented a synthesis of what he had hoped and fought for his entire life: the construction of a party of the working classes built by themselves. To Luciano Martins, he confessed: “I’ve cried a river.” Pedrosa was indeed a human being who, understanding the injustices of the world, fought to transform it.

José Castilho Marques Neto holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and is a professor at the São Paulo State University (Unesp). He is a researcher, author, editor, public manager, and international consultant in the cultural and educational fields. Among his other works, he has published the book Solidão revolucionária: Mário Pedrosa e as origens do trotskismo no Brasil [Revolutionary Solitude: Mário Pedrosa and the Origins of Trotskyism in Brazil] (2022).

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The

challenge of Pedrosa, or the radicality of the real

Marcio Doctors

THE CHALLENGE OF PEDROSA, OR THE RADICALITY OF THE REAL MARCIO DOCTORS

Mario Pedrosa challenges us. Why does he challenge us? Because he has become a reference for thinking about aesthetics and politics, and, more than that, he offered us the thought of the radicality of the real. But why would that be a challenge? Because, thanks to his convictions, he never allowed his thinking to crystallize and turn into something dogmatic. On the contrary, he produced an open-ended thinking, placing himself in the gap – that is, in the interval between what did not yet exist and what was about to exist – always attentive to reality, never failing to consider it; the radicality of the real was his compass. Today, we are surprised by what he perceived, indicated and left open to be filled by the unfolding events.

The challenge lies is in how to maintain the same lucidity of analysis, the attentive, generous, and unbiased way of seeing art and life. The challenge lies in how to maintain the radicality of the real.

We can venture a script – always remembering how limited and circumstantial they are. His thinking is based on three pillars: Marxism, gestalt, and modern art. He avoided the pasteurized canons of these thoughts and positioned himself in the

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on the left Mario Pedrosa

during a public speech, 1963 collection O Estado de S. Paulo

MARCIO DOCTORS THE CHALLENGE OF PEDROSA, OR THE RADICALITY OF THE REAL

radicality of their foundations, hence his convictions.

In this way, he produced with the thinking of one a displacement of the axis of the other.

According to journalist Edmundo Moniz, his lifelong friend, in “A personalidade de Mário Pedrosa” [The personality of Mário Pedrosa], published in the catalog Mário Pedrosa: arte, revolução, reflexão [Mario Pedrosa: Art, Revolution, Reflection] (1991), “the guiding thread of his work, which is always that of revolution that must replace the capitalist world with the socialist world. The politician and the art critic have the same purpose, the intention to provoke the profound renewals that history demands and will inevitably determine.”

Mario Pedrosa was a revolutionary, and for him, both Marxism and modern art represented a spiritual revolution. Let’s set aside clichés; we don’t need to repeat that he wasn’t pamphleteer, but it’s important to clarify and establish a distinction: he wasn’t propagandistic in art because, for him, what was taking place in the first half of the 20th century was a spiritual revolution of the utmost

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importance which would bring to the surface of the reality of life the commitment to freedom, the new, and the construction of a more just and generous society. Modern art fits into this project by giving expression to another sensitivity capable of reinventing form and proposing a new way of expressing freedom and seeing reality.

Modern art broke with the canons of classical naturalistic central perspective, questioning the fine arts and five centuries of dominance of the idea of representing external reality through verisimilitude, inaugurated by the Renaissance. The extent of this fact goes beyond technical achievements, and Mario Pedrosa emphasizes in his text “Panorama da pintura moderna” [Panorama of Modern Painting], published in the collection Mário Pedrosa: arte, ensaios [Mario Pedrosa: Art, Essays] in 2015, that the revolution is primarily of a spiritual nature. Let us observe the relevance of his thoughts when writing about the painter Paul Gauguin: […] this approximation is not only technical but primarily of a spiritual nature. He [Gauguin] is perhaps the first great European artist for whom

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THE CHALLENGE OF PEDROSA, OR THE RADICALITY OF THE REAL

MARCIO DOCTORS

(…) thanks to his convictions, he never allowed his thinking to crystallize and turn into something dogmatic. On the contrary, he produced an open-ended thinking, placing himself in the gap – that is, in the interval between what did not yet exist and what was about to exist – always attentive to reality (…)

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the art of the exotic and primitive peoples is not just a curiosity but as creative as his own, guided by a plastic and spiritual necessity that is as authentic and elevated as Western art. Moreover, it must be said that Gauguin reveals in this attitude one of the deepest and most enduring characteristics of his time, and in that sense, equally of our time: direct spiritual contact for the first time in human history among all cultures, past and present, prehistoric or contemporary, across time and space. The consequences of this interpenetration of cultures have yet to fully reveal themselves in their entire development.

However, one cannot understand modern art without keeping this fact firmly present in mind.

By highlighting that one of the great contributions of this moment was to consider that different visual cultures have the same plastic and spiritual needs as Western art, Pedrosa reveals the extent of breaking a Eurocentric paradigm and the importance of creating space for different expression manifestations; for the expression of the other. And not only the expressive differences between distinct cultures, but also among

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different individuals within the same society. Let us remember his adherence to the ideas of Dr. Nise da Silveira and the artists of the former psychiatric hospital of Engenho de Dentro, in Rio de Janeiro – his contribution was fundamental in getting the cultural elite of the time to pay attention to the works of Raphael Domingues, Emygdio de Barros, Fernando Diniz, Carlos Pertuis, Adelina Gomes, among others, as artists of great importance in our Modernism. He also influenced our perspective so that we could later appreciate the fantastic contribution to contemporary art by Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Let us also remember the exhibition Alegria de viver, alegria de criar [Joy of Living, Joy of Creating], which Pedrosa developed with visual artist Lygia Pape for the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ), focusing on the cultural expressions of the different indigenous peoples of the territory known as Brazil. Or, as a response for the fire suffered by MAM/RJ in 1978, the proposal of the Museum of Origins, which would form a network of museums composed of five core areas: indigenous art, black art, folk art, art of images from the unconscious, and contemporary manifestations. With the Museu das Origens,

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Pedrosa brings to the forefront of the art scene the concept of anthropological art, which today has great relevance in museums and institutional cultural policies, the art market, and in people’s lives.

What we can gather in this brief timeline is Pedrosa’s conviction regarding the formal and spiritual achievements in modern art, beyond the internationally acclaimed artists with whom he interacted with and established strong connections – Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and Giorgio Morandi, among others, who, are part of a continuity of Western art. What Pedrosa’s thinking brings innovatively is a radical acceptance of Gauguin’s choice, shifting the axis of art from Western Europe to the so-called peripheral countries, including Brazil. Although this may seem taken for granted today, it is important to remember that this fundamental step was taken by Pedrosa when he wrote “Discurso aos Tupiniquins ou Nambás” [Speech to the Tupiniquim or Nambá Peoples] in 1975, during his exile from the military dictatorship. In this speech, published in the mentioned collection, he proposes the shift of Western art axis to

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Mario Pedrosa and Nise da Silveira at the book launch of the Coleção museus by Funarte, at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, 1980 collection Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente

MARCIO DOCTORS THE CHALLENGE OF PEDROSA, OR THE RADICALITY OF THE REAL

[…] countries like ours, which, even though oppressed and underdeveloped, do not arrive exhausted at the level of contemporary history but float in their necessary situation on or below the major meridian line. When it is said that their art is primitive or popular, it is as valid as saying it is futuristic.

Modern art indicated to Mario Pedrosa the richness and importance of different formal expressions of other civilizations, but the way he unfolded this achievement was due to a very particular equation of how he filtered them. Let’s take a step back: modern art can be defined as an affirmation of the eminently plastic elements of an artwork, meaning that the artist discovers that the painting it is no longer for him an artificial transposition of external reality; it is a separate universe with its own imaginary plane, detached from external coordination of the linear perspective with its unique vanishing point.

However, if the object no longer represents its natural reality, its placement in external space, it does acquire a new concrete quality in the painting, the plastic reality.

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This consideration in “Forma e personalidade” [Form and Personality], an article included in Arte, forma e personalidade [Art, Form, and Personality] (1979), indicates that the painting, by becoming an autonomous object created by the artist, calls into question the subject-object relationship, triggering a questioning of the primacy of the artist’s subjectivity in this relationship. It dismantles the scheme initiated by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari when he published Lives of the Artists in 1550, where the importance of the artist as a great subjective personality was first emphasized (think of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo). At the same time, this movement turned the art critic, emerging two centuries later, into an intermediary between the public and the artist, attributed with the power to unveil what the artist intended to convey with their subjective vision embodied in the artwork. In other words, direct perception of the artwork is abandoned.

This does not mean that the mythification of the artist has been dismantled by modern art – the art market has taken care of maintaining it – nor that is not an important element in the constitution of

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Today, we are surprised by what he perceived, indicated and left open to be filled by the unfolding events.

The challenge lies in how to maintain the same lucidity of analysis, the attentive, generous, and unbiased way of seeing art and life.

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an artwork. What Mario Pedrosa perceives is a paradox that allows for the repositioning of the philosophical problem of the dichotomy between subject and object, triggering a new aesthetic process. The theoretical framework he employs is gestalt, which enables an exploration of the objective elements of the artwork, governed by their own laws of perception, freeing “the affective nature of form” so that it becomes possible to relate directly to the artwork without the need for the art critic’s intermediation to decipher what the artist intended to convey with a particular creation.

To contribute to understanding, we quote the beautiful and enlightening preface by Otília Arantes to Arte, forma e personalidade [Art, Form and Personality]: The classic antithesis – subjectivity versus objectivity – would be resolved as long as the key to aesthetic experiences resided in the intrinsic properties or the “affective nature of form in the artwork.” This is what the thesis attempts to demonstrate through a Psychology of Art focused on the artwork and its formal

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THE CHALLENGE OF PEDROSA, OR THE RADICALITY OF THE REAL

MARCIO DOCTORS

Mario Pedrosa in his library. To his right, Abraham Palatnik and Geraldo de Barros; to his left, Lidy Prati, Tomás Maldonado, Almir Mavignier, and Ivan Serpa, circa 1949 photo Unknown author collection Pedrosa family

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(physiognomic) qualities that govern the spectator’s affective reactions.

By turning the key of gestalt, Mario Pedrosa inseminated through the ears, as artist Lygia Clark would say, the young artists of the 1950s and 1960s with Constructivism through his daily involvement in newspapers and his role in the direction of the Biennials. More specifically, afterwards, he had strong impact on the formation of Neoconcretism, whose prominent figures included Abraham Palatinik, Almir Mavignier, Amilcar de Castro, Décio Vieira, Franz Weissmann, Hélio Oiticica, Hércules Barsotti, Ivan Serpa, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Willys de Castro, and poets Ferreira Gullar, Reynaldo Jardim, and Theon Spanudis. However, where his influence was most noticeable and where gestalt thinking manifested itself aesthetically in a more consequential and concrete manner was in the post-neoconcrete rupture, which led artists Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape to distance themselves from the neoconcrete movement and establish a new paradigm for art based on Pedrosa’s proposals.

They broke with the museum walls and allowed

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the artwork to invade the world, consummating a direct relationship between the artist and the spectator, between art and life.

The process of the post-neoconcrete rupture became possible because, when the artwork started to be conceived as an autonomous object in relation to the artist-subject and the spectator-subject, Pedrosa set out to understand the laws that governed the art object (hence the importance of gestalt in unravelling them). This seemingly simple fact is of great importance because the artwork ceases to be mere extension of the artist-subject and also ceases to be presented to the spectator as something closed and finished. The artwork, based on this awareness, becomes an intersection of subjectivities that possess the same sensorymotor apparatus capable of activating the perception of the affective nature of form in the artwork, which is what his thesis is about.

In other words, the subject-object dichotomy is replaced by something that will give its name to a text by philosopher Michel Foucault, which

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can help us to “decipher” Pedrosa’s intuition.

In “O pensamento do exterior” [The Thought of the Outside], compiled in the series Ditos e escritos [Speeches and Writings] in the volume Estética: literatura, pintura, música e cinema (2006) [Aesthetics: Literature and Painting, Music and Cinema], Foucault writes: “[…] the being of language only appears to itself with the disappearance of the subject.” That is, when Lygia Clark, for example, creates Os bichos [The Animals] – manipulable metal sculptures – she is not inviting the spectator to participate as if offering entertainment art, nor is she asking it to complete the work she presents as the proposer.

Instead, she offers other singular subjectivities the possibility of experiencing art. She causes the subject to die so that the being of language – art – can appear. This undoing of the subject and the revelation of the singular subjectivity that art allows to express is what led Pedrosa to define art as the experimental exercise of freedom.

The cycle closes, politics and art are the possibility of the death of traditional subject as closed subjectivity, in order to perceive the other and the

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difference. Each one of us is always the other of the other. This allows us to understand that the exterior and interior of subjects are structures closer than we imagine, and that can only be fully realized when the subject accepts the other. That is why the post-neoconcrete rupture is important; that is why politics is important. Both movements aggregate the power of life in society. These two human activities require and solicit alterity; we are always the interior of the exterior and the exterior of the interior. This is the great challenge proposed

by Mario Pedrosa to be confronted, as only the experimental exercise of freedom is capable of guaranteeing, in the radicality of the real, ethical and aesthetic practices.

Marcio Doctors holds a MA in Aesthetics from the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IFCS/UFRJ). He is a curator at the Casa Museu Eva Klabin, where he develops the project Respiração [Respiration]. He also works as an independent curator.

In the late 1970s, he was Mario Pedrosa’s secretary, and in the 1980s, he was part of the collective of artists called “A Moreninha” [The Brunette]. He has published articles in Brazil and abroad.

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Mobile Mario

Marcos Augusto Gonçalves

MOBILE MARIO MARCOS AUGUSTO

On September 11, 1948, sculptor Alexander Calder and his wife, Louisa James Calder, arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the opening of a significant exhibition of the artist’s works, which would take place in the building of the then Ministério da Educação e Saúde [Ministry of Education and Health], a jewel of Brazilian modern architecture. The exhibition would later follow on to the Museum of Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP), marking the beginning of a series of events that would forever seal in history the relationships between the American artist and the Brazilian artistic and architectural community.

Two characters were decisive for the visit: architect Henrique Mindlin, who worked hard to make it happen, and the journalist, art critic, and political activist Mario Pedrosa, who had become acquainted with the artist during a period between Washington and New York, where he lived with his wife, Mary Houston, in the 1940s, after a period in Paris, where he engaged in the socialist movement led by the Soviet dissident Leon Trotsky.

During his American exile, Pedrosa had the privilege to attend Calder’s major retrospective

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on the left Mario Pedrosa around the time of the São Paulo Biennial, 1961 photo Athayde de Barros collection Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo

MARCOS AUGUSTO MOBILE MARIO

exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the show opened in September 1943. The following year, he published two articles about the artist on the pages of Correio da Manhã [Morning Courier], a daily newspaper in which he had established a providential regular collaboration that helped him to sustain himself in the United States. The impact of the American artist’s work on the Brazilian critic’s aesthetic concepts was unequivocal. “A revelation,” he declared later.

On the occasion of Calder’s visit to Brazil, Pedrosa published the essay “A máquina, Calder, Léger e outros” [The Machine, Calder, Léger and Others] in Política e Letras [Politics and Letters] and subsequently in Diário de S. Paulo [S. Paulo’s Daily]. In this essay, he analyzed with aesthetic and political finesse the work of the man who, “in dialectical opposition to American civilization, founded on business to business,” in his opinion, emerged as the most representative artist in the United States. “It is precisely this opposition that makes Calder an exponent of that culture, revealing what can be sound and susceptible to development within it,” he wrote.

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Pedrosa’s free thinking perspective stood out from more common and schematic Marxist opinions that tended to value the political role of art with narrative, realistic, and content-driven tendencies.

Calder’s work did not come with a manifesto against capitalist society, nor did it explicitly express any kind of ideological exhortation to the struggle against alienation engendered by the productive machinery of capital.

According to Pedrosa’s explanation, the critical aspects derived from a deeper process that resolved itself in the formal field. In his creations, by using industrial tools, Calder ended up by giving them purposes that proved inconsequential, lending “to mechanics a gratuitousness that it does not have, nor is it of its nature.” As a result, the critic asserted, his work surpassed the very utilitarian civilization from which it came.

His reflections on the mobiles are particularly stimulating, works in which the clash with the machine, the quintessential artifact of industrial society, escapes fetichism and its worship as “modern deity”.

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Mario Pedrosa in his apartment in Rio de Janeiro, in 1959. Always open to friends and artists, the place also gathered many artworks received as gifts photo Luciano Martins collection Pedrosa Family

Like the mobiles (…) the cosmopolitan and unique trajectory of Pedrosa also often moves through unforeseen events, involuntary pauses, unexpected encounters, and chance.

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The critic notes how different Calder’s approach was in comparison to Fernand Léger, whom, in his point of view, ended up by forging in his works a kind of “reverse neo-academism: instead of the body, as a model, we have the machine.” On the other hand, the creator of mobiles, through a different path, managed to transcend and surpass it.

In non-motorized mobiles, said Pedrosa, Calder “has now tamed [the machine] and left it behind.”

He continues: It is no longer its contained and controlled energy that interests him. It is, instead, the apprehension of the uncontrollable forces of the cosmos, the irreducible movement that feeds the universe’s engine, the eternal flow of shapes in space.”

As art critic Lorenzo Mammì observed in the preface to the collection Mário Pedrosa: arte, ensaios [Mário Pedrosa: Art, Essays], (2015) Calder seemed to have embody at that moment paradigm of the artist that Pedrosa had long been searching for

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“Using the same materials and instruments of industrial work, (Calder) returns to the machine the imprecision and creative unpredictability of man; he is also the artist who synthesizes the rigor of Mondrian and the spontaneity of Miró, the two poles of abstractionism.”

“He is the prophet of the open form, in process, which Pedrosa would later encourage in young Brazilian artists.”

Back in Brazil, as is known, Mario Pedrosa became the great interlocutor, encourager, and critic of artists who, in the transition from the 1940 to the 1950s, ventured into Abstractionism, Concretism, or Kinetic Art, and who later promoted avant-garde experiments like those proposed by Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, among other artists.

Roberta Saraiva, the organizer of the book Calder no Brasil [Calder in Brazil] (2006), turns to mobiles as an image to translate the “worldly and profound, generous and ever-changing” friendship of the protagonists of her book. Could these artworks also represent the multifaceted, dynamic, and extraordinary life of Pedrosa, in

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which a succession of situations unfolds and constantly reshapes itself in activities ranging from political activism to art and architecture criticism, innovative museological work, and the remarkable ability to create an extensive network of coexistence, interaction, and dialogue with countless artists, intellectuals, politicians, and relevant figures of the 20th century.

Like the mobiles that, in Pedrosa’s words, materialize their multiple plastic virtualities in space, moved “by the breathless blow of a man, by a gust of air, a vibration, and any kind of shock,” the cosmopolitan and unique trajectory of Pedrosa also often moves through unforeseen events, involuntary pauses, unexpected encounters, and chance. It was constantly reflected upon and open to utopias and the unexplored.

It is this “Mario mobile” that the Ocupação Mario Pedrosa, organized by Itaú Cultural, seeks to capture. In this publication, a set of articles is dedicated to explaining a little of the rich intellectual and existential diversity of this humanist of many qualities, whose legacy will endure as a luminous spot in Brazilian and international culture.

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Marcos Augusto Gonçalves is a journalist and currently editor of the cultural supplement Ilustríssima, of Folha de S. Paulo, a newspaper in which he has been editor of Opinião and of the sections Ilustrada and Mais!. He has also worked as a correspondent in Milan, Italy, and in New York, United States. Also, he is the co-author Cultura e participação nos anos 60 [Culture and Participation in the 1960s] (Brasiliense, 1983), with Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda, and the author of 1922, a semana que não terminou [1922, The Week That Did Not End] (Companhia das Letras, 2012).

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above Mario Pedrosa in his

summer house, in Búzios collection Lygia Pape

Architectures

and modernities: from the search for origins to the utopia of Brasília

Sabrina Fontenele

ARCHITECTURES AND MODERNITIES SABRINA FONTENELE

Mario Pedrosa was concerned with the question of who would investigate architectural production within the context of modernity. If previously this task fell to art critics, it deserved to be directed towards intellectuals who clearly understood the revolutionary nature of that production. The author from Pernambuco dedicated himself to this commitment by presenting his reflections and research in articles published mainly in the 1950s, which demonstrate an attempt to present the genealogy of Brazilian modern architecture.

In a conference held in Paris, the content of which was published in the magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui [Architecture Today] in December 1953, Mario Pedrosa made it clear that, in Brazil, the modern movement in architecture differed completely from what was manifested in the visual arts and music. In the same French event, he stated that the question was not about to discover or rediscover the country. It had always been there, present with its ecology, climate, soil, materials, nature, and everything that is inexorable within

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on the left Mario Pedrosa

in his apartment, 1959 collection Folha de S.Paulo

SABRINA FONTENELE ARCHITECTURES AND MODERNITIES

it. Without primitivism as seen among literary and musical figures, and without ideological nationalism as seen among political writers, the geographical and physical reality is something absolute and primordial for an architect. For others, it is, in way, a matter of choice or interpretation.

He further defended the premise that the origin of Brazilian architecture was abroad. Lucio Costa and a group of students and young architects from Rio de Janeiro studied the production of European architects whose ideas and projects were already reaching Brazil: Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. In doing so, they “became modern without realizing it,” seeking to reconcile art with technique and making the benefits of industrialization accessible.

His hypothesis is reaffirmed in the article “Introdução à arquitetura brasileira” [Introduction to Brazilian Architecture] – published in Jornal do Brasil [Brazil’s Journal] in May 1959 – where he argues that modern Brazilian architecture is the result of these cultural influences, as well as sociological and

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political events such as capitalism, industrialization, and authoritarian regimes. In the text, he provides an overview of the early ideas and publications still in the form of manifestos, and the first constructions, tracing a brief chronology of events that characterize the Brazilian phenomenon. In this context, notable examples includes architect Rino Levi’s article “Arquitetura e estética das cidades” [Architecture and Aesthetics of Cities] from 1925, Flavio de Carvalho’s project for the Government Palace, Gregori Warchavchik’s residence, and Le Corbusier’s travels and lectures in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Especially the works and ideas of latter architect were frequently debated in the so-called revolutionary context of those young enthusiast architects from Rio de Janeiro.

Some of Mario Pedrosa’s fundamental texts sought do identify the genesis of this production in Brazil.

This question was not only a concern for him, as it was also a topic of discussion at the International Congress of Art Critics organized by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), in which he was an active figure, raising the debate on the origin of modern architecture in different countries.

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In the article “Arquitetura e crítica da cidade” [Architecture and Art Criticism], published in Jornal do Brasil [Brazil’s Journal] in 1957, Pedrosa wrote: “Modern architecture, with its new materials and its inescapable problems, has increasingly influenced industrial design and taste in our days.” The author demonstrated that architecture played a leading role compared to other arts in the 20th century. He understood that in the early days of the modern movement in architecture, it was necessary – as he wrote on the same newspaper on February 22, 1957 – to focus on the “strictly functional aspect, with a radical abandonment of all aesthetic or plastic concerns.” He also asserted that materials were the protagonists of this international productive revolution. However, in Brazil, this conception underwent modifications, and professionals like Oscar Niemeyer sought other paths. This was especially evident in Niemeyer’s house in Canoas, Rio de Janeiro, which Pedrosa defined as a work of art and a confrontation between nature and the machine, or “a brilliant feat of the rugged topographical integration of the site,” as described in the mentioned article.

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Mario Pedrosa was concerned with the question of who would investigate architectural production within the context of modernity. If previously this task fell to art critics, it deserved to be directed towards intellectuals who clearly understood the revolutionary nature of that production.

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SABRINA FONTENELE ARCHITECTURES AND MODERNITIES

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Facade of the sixth São Paulo Biennial, 1961 photo Athayde de Barros collection Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo

New spaces of sociability were taking shape in the ground floors of modern buildings in downtown São Paulo, fostering encounters in galleries, cafes, bookstores, and cinemas. Among the constructions of the period, the Edifício e Galeria Califórnia [California Building and Gallery] – a project designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1951 – stands out. Mario Pedrosa harshly criticized both the architecture of the building and the mural by painter Di Cavalcanti installed on its ground floor.

The relationship between architecture and modern murals is also a topic of discussion in various articles, including comparisons with the Mexican example, where buildings served as a backdrop for the country’s impactful artistic production. In Brazil, on the contrary, architecture played a more important and revolutionary role than murals.

In 1942, Pedrosa published the article “Portinari: de Brodósqui6 aos murais de Washington” [Portinari: From Brodowski to the Washington Murals], in which he analyzed the production of painter Candido Portinari, highlighting the panels at the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES) in Rio de Janeiro. Considered by the world’s critics

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6. Translator’s note: Brodósqui, or Brodowski, is a Brazilian township in the interior of the state of São Paulo, located 18 miles (29 kilometers) from Ribeirão Preto.

SABRINA FONTENELE ARCHITECTURES AND MODERNITIES

as a “classic monument of all modern architecture, both in Brazil and internationally,” according to an article by the critic published in Jornal do Brasil [Brazil’s Journal] in 1959, this modern architecture icon is directly linked to the imagery of technological development through vertical construction.

Designed by a team of modern architects including Carlos Leão, Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Ernani Vasconcellos, and Jorge Machado Moreira, and coordinated by Lucio Costa, the construction had the troubled participation of Le Corbusier. The building embodies the five points of modern architecture advocated by the FrenchSwiss architect: open plan, free façade, pilotis, roof garden, and ribbon windows. Its realization was considered a “miracle,” putting Le Corbusier’s ideas into practice in Brazil for the first time. It was incorporated into various modern architecture manuals for its technological advancements and for being one of the first modern skyscrapers in history.

The MES building, currently known as the Capanema Palace, was a work constantly referenced by Pedrosa for its innovative character and as a demonstration of the complex relationships between young modern architects and authoritarian regimes.

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The author points out that architectural modernity associated with social concerns effectively materializes with the construction of the Complexo Residencial Prefeito Mendes de Moraes [Mayor Mendes de Moraes Residential Complex], known as Pedregulho [Boulder], in Rio de Janeiro. Designed by architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy in 1947, the complex was to serve the social, economic, and political transformations of disadvantaged classes.

It was an isolated attempt to address the serious problem of popular housing in Brazil.

Pedrosa’s analyses and aspirations revolved around Brasília, inaugurated as the new federal capital. In the article “Reflexões em torno da nova capital” [Reflections of the New Capital], published in the magazine Brasil: Arquitetura Contemporânea [Brazil: Contemporary Architecture] in 1957, he supported Lucio’s Costa’s proposal: A monumental axis, intersected by another arched one, the political, ideological, civic, and cultural life of the city comes alive along the first one, in its various forms, and through the second one, material circulation takes place, while on

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either side of it, ample and beautiful spaces are reserved for the privacy of its inhabitant’ lives, is the Columbus’ egg.”

Guilherme Wisnik, organizer of the book Mário Pedrosa: Arquitetura, ensaios críticos [Mário Pedrosa: Architecture, Critical Essays] (2015), demonstrated that a significant portion of Pedrosa’s reflections were published between 1957 and 1960, during the competition for the pilot plan, the execution and the inauguration of the capital.

It was in the new city, moreover, that the International Congress of Art Critics took place.

Brasília provided different impressions to the participants of the event, being subjected under the scrutiny of foreign professional critics. The congress was documented by Mario in the article “Lições do congresso internacional de críticos” [Lessons from the International Congress of Critics], which reinforced the idea that the construction of the capital was “one of the boldest projects of Western culture, and its failure would be partly a failure of that culture.” He believed that Brasília could be an unparalleled field for the

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experience of integrating the arts in all domains on an unprecedent scale.

Indeed, the capital was also a subject of concern for Pedrosa. While accepted as a realized fact, its future posed itself as one of the great problems for the country, particularly regarding its uncontrolled and unchecked growth. In the article “Brasília, hora de planejar” [Brasília, Time to Plan], the critic praised the decision to preserve Lucio Costa’s pilot plan but pointed out the necessity for careful planning that would connect the urban plan to the suburban and regional plans.

Otherwise, the problem would worsen, leading to “national confusion.”

“Brasília is much more than urbanism. It is a hypothesis for the reconstruction of an entire country,” wrote Pedrosa in 1959, in the article “Introdução à arquitetura brasileira” [Introduction to Brazilian Architecture].7 The author considered the city as an opportunity to start afresh with the occupation of the country, the construction of a national identity, and new possibilities for social organization.

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7. The last three articles were presented by Professor Aracy Amaral in the publication organized with texts

by Pedrosa titled Dos murais de Portinari aos espaços de Brasília [From Portinari’s Murals to Brasília’s Spaces] (1981).

SABRINA FONTENELE

The occupation of the federal capital by the military regime shortly its inauguration may have been the disappointment that led Pedrosa to turn his attention back to the visual arts. However, his legacy as a critic continues to impact generations of curators, researchers, and historians who delve into Brazilian architectural production.

ARCHITECTURES AND MODERNITIES

Sabrina Fontenele is an architect and urban planner with a B.A. from the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC).

She holds a M.A. and a Ph.D. from the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAU/USP) and completed her postdoctoral studies at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp).

She is the author of books such as Modos de morar nos apartamentos modernos: rastros de modernidade [Ways of Living in Modern Apartments: Traces of Modernity] and Edifícios modernos e o traçado urbano no Centro de São Paulo [Modern Buildings and Urban Layout in Downtown São Paulo], among others. From 2012 to 2018, she was the coordinator of the “Construções, conjuntos e sítios” axis at the Centro de Preservação Cultural (CPC) of USP. She served as the director of culture at the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil – Departamento de São Paulo (IAB/SP) between 2020 and 2022, and co-curated the 13ª bienal internacional de arquitetura de São Paulo [São Paulo’s 13th International Architecture Biennial]. Currently, she is also a professor at Escola da Cidade [School of the City].

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Museums as cultural and educational spaces

Luiza Mader

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Mario Pedrosa during a conference about the São Paulo Biennial, 1964 collection O Estado de S. Paulo

“The Museu de Arte Moderna will not be a closed institution, intended only for an intellectual elite; its collection of artworks will also be open to the people, who feel an increasingly greater need to experience and learn.”8 These words spoken by Mario Pedrosa upon assuming the directorship of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP), a position he held between 1960 and 1962, summarize the thinking behind the numerous museum management and proposal initiatives he led throughout his life. This defense also reveals the democratic and educational profile that underpinned the critic’s work in museums. For him, these institutions would assume a greater function than mere repositories of masterpieces for exhibition, as he believed that museum spaces should promote the cultural and educational development of the country, fostering the creation of a new collective sensitivity.

If the critic’s role was based on a permanent commitment to some “artistic avant-garde adventure,” it was up to the director to observe, stimulate, and experiment, as well as to preserve “the antennae of the critic” to embrace relevant art

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8. PEDROSA, Mario. O Museu de Arte Moderna será aberto ao povo. Última Hora, São Paulo, Nov. 19, 1960.

(Historical Archive Wanda Svevo).

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movements of the time. “His activity is, therefore, that of an attentive observer, an experimenter, like a chemist in his laboratory.”9 Museum spaces were, by excellence, a shelter for artists and, therefore, a place of creative inventiveness, becoming an extension of the collaborative partnership between the critic and the creator, an idea encouraged

by Pedrosa since the 1940s and whose consequences would impact the emergence of concrete art in Brazil.10 These relationship of complicity and collaboration was a constant in the author’s trajectory and remained present in future endeavors, such as the Museum of Solidarity in Chile, an institution whose collection was exclusively structured with donated artworks from artists. Certainly, these donations were the result of a complex context, ranging from solidarity with the Chilean socialist experiment to the prestige of Pedrosa and the networks of trust and affection he built throughout his life.

9. PEDROSA, Mario. O crítico e o diretor. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Nov. 22, 1960. [Arquivo Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp (Cedem).

Fundo Mario Pedrosa].

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10. BÔAS, Gláucia Villas. Concretismo. In: BARCINSKI, Fabiana Werneck (org.). Sobre a arte brasileira: da pré-história aos anos 60. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes; Edições Sesc São Paulo, 2014. p. 279.

Upon assuming the directorship of MAM, the critic also took on the organization of the 6ª bienal internacional de São Paulo [6th São Paulo International Biennial] in 1961, which marked the entity’s tenth anniversary. This edition of the Biennial can be considered the museological genesis of Mario Pedrosa, as it witnessed the presence of the contemporary artists on an equal footing with unrecognized artists and those with indigenous practices, whose cultural legacy had not been influenced by the European art filter. The tension between popular art and erudite art, a key issue for the author during his time in Chile and later for the inclusion of indigenous and African arts in his museographic and artistic narrative, served as the backdrop for the 6th Biennial.

This pedagogical dimension was also of utmost importance to Pedrosa’s museological thinking, as can be observed in practically all projects conceived by the author, such as the project for the Museu de Brasília, whose outline was sketched in a letter addressed to Oscar Niemeyer in 1958.

The author was aware of the enormous difficulties, including financial ones, in creating a complete

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collection for a “museum of plastic arts out of nothing and making it worthy of the name” in harmony with the monumentality expressed by the new capital. In his words, it would be an institution of a pedagogical, didactic, and documentary nature, primarily composed of “copies, photographic reproductions, molds of all kinds, models, etc.,”11 with the intention of encompassing all schools and stylistic trends of the past and distinct contemporary art movements.

A few years later, amidst the impasse that led to the donation of the MAM’s collection to the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Pedrosa formulated an urbanistic proposal titled “Parecer sobre o core da cidade universitária” [Opinion Regarding the Core of the University Town].

Although it never materialized, the document raises significant questions about his museological conception, such as the association of the museum with the “core,” a “vibrant heart of university culture,”12 a space for safeguarding

11. ARANTES, Otília (org.). Política das artes: Mário Pedrosa. São Paulo: Edusp, 1995. p. 303. (Textos escolhidos I).

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12. AMARAL, Aracy. Mário Pedrosa e a Cidade Universitária da USP. Risco – Revista de Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo, São Paulo, i. 1, p. 59-62, 2003.

the collection donated by Ciccillo Matarazzo.

Once again, the social and pedagogical functions, crucial elements in individual formation, played a central role in the document, as the proposal encompassed all forms of aesthetic education, ensuring direct contact of the public with the artworks as a means of teaching and learning.

From this perspective, Pedrosa pointed out the limitations of conventional formulas in academic environments, often restricted to books and lectures, while highlighting the numerous possibilities for inventive learning that museums presented at that time.

The critic’s museological thinking attests that social imagination and fraternity were fundamental driving forces for the museum institution to become definitely a place of openness to other possible worlds, despite the repressive nature of the military dictatorship, which decreed his arrest when he was unjustly accused of defaming the country’s image abroad. Mario Pedrosa’s arrival in Chile in 1970, a nation that welcomed him from the Brazilian dictatorship, coincided with the victory of Salvador Allende, the president

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Press conference of Mario Pedrosa upon assuming the directorship of the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo (MAM/SP), 1960 collection Folha de S.Paulo

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responsible for implementing a peaceful and democratic socialist path. Pedrosa quickly joined the faculty of the School of Arts at the University of Chile and, subsequently, receive an invitation from the president to conceive the Museum of Solidarity, directly participating in the key political projects of the Unidade Popular (UP).13 Initially called the Museum of Modern and Experimental Art, the Museum of Solidarity assumed a prominent role due to its internationalist character and its impressive capacity for global mobilization. It is possible to interpret a singular gesture of solidarity as a kind of contagious element, an idea of transnational collective communion that quickly gained momentum and spread throughout the art world. Undoubtedly, Pedrosa was the one who contributed the most to conveying the inherent fraternal sense of the initiative, garnering the instant support of artists from every corner of the globe. Although the critic was not the original author of the idea, he was the driving force behind the international endeavor, associating the museum’s image with renowned figures in visual

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13. Editor’s note: Left-wing party coalition through which Salvador Allende was elected in 1970.

arts and criticism, such as Giulio Carlo Argan and Dore Ashton, members of the International Committee of Artistic Solidarity with Chile (CISAC).

It was Pedrosa’s merit that the initiative progressed swiftly, yielding its first fruits in less than four months. The spirit of solidarity was so immediate that no donating artist bothered to send a certificate of artwork donation.14 Regarded the institution, he commented: “The main characteristic of this Museum of Solidarity, founded under my guidance, is that it would never purchase a painting. Another provision was that young artists could go there if they wished, without any obligation whatsoever.”15 The museum’s management was characterized by an internationalist orientation and a conventional internal logistics, with initial demands focused on expanding the collection without any restrictions on donations. In a context supported by a collaborative spirit, the act of solidarity could not be refused. Therefore, it is crucial to situate the museum within this peculiar institutional context 14. ZALDÍVAR, Claudia. Museo de la Solidaridad.

Memoria para optar al grado de Licenciado en Teoría e Historia del Arte. Santiago de Chile, 1991, p. 24.

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15. MÁRIO Pedrosa & a vitória de seus fracassos.

O Pasquim, Rio de Janeiro, Year 9, i. 469, Jun. 23-29, 1978. (Cedem Archives. Fundo Mario Pedrosa).

“The Museum of Modern Art will not be a closed institution, intended only for an intellectual elite; its collection of works will also be open to the people, who feel an increasingly greater need to experience and learn.”

(Mario Pedrosa, 1960)

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marked by limited financial resources, a race against time, carried out through joint efforts and under a defined political program.

Around 260 artworks, out of the more than 600 that the institution had gathered by then, were exhibited at the inauguration of the Museum of Solidarity in May 1972. It was an unprecedented event to bring together so many renowned names in a single exhibition, and it also marked the first time that artists such as Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Mauro Marini, and Victor Vasarely were showcased in the country. The inaugural exhibition was also a symbolic act of projecting the institution, whose planning relied on the ongoing collection of donations. Contributions from various parts of the world continued to arrive, but the climate of political instability hindered its progress. Despite the adversities, the institution receive nearly a thousand donations until the tragic September 11, 1973, the date of the coup that overthrew the democratic popular government.

Solidarity and freedom were the two pillars that sustained the entire trajectory of the critic, and

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in that sense, the Chilean exile, the communal vocation of cultural initiatives connected to the Unidade Popular (UP), and the management of the Museum of Solidarity were occasions where these notions converged, creating and extraordinary moment the history of Latin American art. As exiles, the multiple agents of the museum mobilized new sympathizers who, united in various countries, carried on with the initiative. Abroad, the institution adopted a new name: Salvador Allende International Museum of Resistance. Pedrosa managed to escape to Mexico and later went into exile in Paris, his last destination before returning to Brazil in 1977.

The author’s last museum projects after returning to the country – such as the indigenous art exhibition Alegria de viver, alegria de criar [Joy of Living, Joy of Creating], conceived with Lygia Pape, and the Museum of Origins – were forged based on the ideas of creative freedom and popular joy, which were crucial for the development of the revolutionary and community-oriented vocation

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of art. These two elements also influenced the critical and museological principles on which the author relied to advocate for a return to origins.

Only the productions of “the damned of the earth,”16 that is, from indigenous peoples, patients of the psychiatric hospital in Engenho de Dentro,17 and the populations from the Third World, would restore to art the dimension of collective necessity, breaking away from the elitist values of erudite culture, as Pedrosa defended in his later work.

With these projects, he strived for Brazil to delve into its own roots and embrace a moral, political, and artistic revolution that was distant from the market’s prescriptions.

Evaluated together, these initiatives bear witness to Pedrosa’s revolutionary conception, according to which the museum was a territory of permanent freedom, creation, and education. As a master of fraternity, the critic’s museological postulates remain relevant, as does the commitment to 16. In “Discurso aos Tupiniquins ou Nambás” (Speech to the Tupiniquim or Nambá Peoples), written in 1975, Pedrosa makes use of the idea of danados da terra (damned of the earth), a direct reference to Frantz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth published in 1961.

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17. Since the 1940s, Pedrosa publicly supported the art of patients from the Occupational Therapy Section of the Pedro II Psychiatric Center, led by psychiatrist Nise da Silveira.

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restore art to its communal capacity. This conciliatory quest, present in his management, even valued the solidarity dialogue between seemingly incompatible expressions and ideas.

Not by chance, freedom was his utopian horizon.

Luiza Mader Paladino holds a MA and Ph.D. in teoria e história da arte pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP).

Her thesis, “A opção museológica de Mário Pedrosa: solidariedade e imaginação social em museus da América Latina” [Mário Pedrosa’s Museological Option: Solidarity and Social Imagination in Latin American Museums], was awarded by the Comitê Brasileiro de História da Arte (CBHA). She is a professor at the Instituto Federal de Brasília (IFB) and is part of the Grupo de Estudos em Arte Conceitual e Conceitualismos no Museu, linked to the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC/USP), coordinated by Cristina Freire.

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Criticism permanent revolution

in

Pollyana Quintella

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Mario Pedrosa preparing one of his texts in his office photo Unknown author Cemap – Cedem/Unesp*

In 1977, four years before his death and already back in Brazil after his third exile, Mario Pedrosa said that he no longer considered himself an art critic. “Art needs other life experiences that a critic cannot provide.”18 For those who had followed his extensive trajectory, responsible for exerting a significant role in the debates of the Brazilian and international public sphere, such statement could sound, at first, either ironic or demotivating. If one of the leading art critics of the 20th century revealed hesitation towards his own profession, what was left for criticism? Had the modern project, which was then struggling to breathe, now shortening the horizon of the revolutionary utopias that had so mobilized it, also atrophy, with its dismantling, the very exercise of criticism? Pedrosa knew that if art and the social environment change, criticism must also change.

At least since the late 19th century, art critics have been at the heart of the dilemma between establishing and defining artistic canons (based on judicial attributions of value) and challenging and overturning traditional critical judgments, their standards, and hierarchies (opposing crystallized

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18. PEDROSA apud GULLAR apud GALANTERNICK, Nina.

Interview with poet Ferreira Gullar for the Projeto Casa Aberta [Open House Project] Nusc/Faperj.

Rio de Janeiro, Apr. 13, 2009.

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perspectives in favor of the challenge to defining criteria and approaches that correspond to the production of their own time). In the transition from art to culture, or from culture to art, it is the role of criticism to dismantle and reinstate values, to contest and establish hypotheses while keeping up with the displacement of an artistic production that necessarily moves ahead.

CRITICISM IN PERMANENT REVOLUTION

In the Brazilian context, the work of Mario Pedrosa is the most fruitful example of this delicate relationship between criticism and history. In the late 1960s, aligned with Trotskyist perspectives, he stated that “each artist makes their revolution once, but the critic is the restless witness of each revolution. […] The critic thus lives in a permanent revolution.”19 However, throughout his trajectory, this commitment to active engagement with the present, spanning five decades of intense production, was far from being synonymous with any fascination with passing trends or mere scattered eclecticism. Outside the academic

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19. PEDROSA, M. Do porco empalhado ou os critérios da crítica. In: PEDROSA, M. Mundo, homem, arte em crise. 2. ed. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1986. p. 233.

environment,20 Mario Pedrosa’s thinking was primarily constructed in public, through his weekly contributions to newspapers,21 conferences, seminars, and daily interactions with artists themselves. This allowed him the freedom to draw from theoretical sources that went beyond the field of art history, encompassing psychology, philosophy, and social sciences.

As his texts were consulted by both non-specialized audiences and “art connoisseurs” seeking a means to stay updated, Mario Pedrosa’s writing is characterized by a strong commitment to the pedagogical dimension. Pedrosa was concerned not only with the terms of a debate permeated with 20. It wasn’t for lack of trying: the critic applied for the position of chair of Art History and Aesthetics at the Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura da Universidade do Brasil – now Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) – in 1949. It was on this occasion that he presented his famous thesis Da natureza afetiva da forma na obra de arte [On the Affective Nature of Form in the Work of Art], which was pioneering in Latin America in the studies of gestalt and psychology of form. Ironically, despite his efforts, he was not admitted to any of the competitions for the position of livre-docência (equivalent to an associate professorship) at the institution between 1955 and 1956.

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21. The critic regularly contributed to at least three important Brazilian periodicals: Correio da manhã [Morning Courier] (in the 1940s and later in the 1960s), Tribuna da imprensa [Press Tribune], and Jornal do Brasil [Brazil’s Journal] (both in the 1950s).

He also made occasional contributions to other newspapers and magazines.

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erudition but also with the formation of his readers’ repertoire. A careful negotiation in constructing a public sphere that would enable art (and the critic) to fulfill its social function.

Regarding the public sphere, his criticism extended beyond the written word, encompassing performances that were no less important. This led him to take on roles as a curator and museum director, political activist and mobilizer, professor, and journalist. His biography teaches us that if art criticism is part of the process of inscribing artistic creation into its social reality, sometimes mediating and coordinating tensions between institutions, artists, art history, and society, the critic should be a kind of antithesis to the ivory tower intellectual.

In Pedrosa’s words, the critic should be like and “annoying cricket in a corner of the grand social hall, constantly making its presence known.”22 In the hundreds of pages that make up his body of work, Mario Pedrosa’s approaches vary thematically and methodologically. There are texts that start from the analysis of specific artworks in order to reach and defend more general ideas

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22. PEDROSA, M. Do porco empalhado ou os critérios da crítica. In: FERREIRA, Glória (eds.). Crítica de arte no Brasil: temáticas contemporâneas. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 2006. p. 208.

(such as those from the early stages of his career, focused on Käthe Kollwitz, Candido Portinari, and Alexander Calder, which were fundamental in refining and shaping his critical approach). There are texts that aim to review and recontextualize transnational historical chapters (such as those related to the Semana de arte moderna [Modern Art Week] of 1922 and those that provided an overview of modern painting). There are texts that skillfully combine art and cultural criticism, such as those from the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, there are also theoretical-philosophical speculations and reflections of the art system and cultural policies. At certain key moments, even his evaluation parameters changed.

While challenging himself to weave interpretations of his sociocultural context – by pursuing symptoms and aspects related to generational issues, or by identifying traces of broader paradigmatic changes – Pedrosa did not become a hostage to the analytical criteria established by his own critical framework. He dared to change his opinion publicly, as in the emblematic case of Portinari. What unified such a multifaceted

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the previous page A news article from

Folha de S. Paulo after Mario Pedrosa’s return from his last exile, 1977 collection Folha de S.Paulo

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production was his understanding of art as a political and, above all, revolutionary tool dedicated to reflecting upon and transforming society. Against poverty and inequality, he sought to expand the negotiable horizons of what was possible and enhance human dignity.

Even when he committed himself to advocating a truly modern criticism in the late 1940s, one that focused on understanding the artistic phenomenon through the lens of language and its distinct aesthetic lexicon, Pedrosa did not succumb to the allure of “art for art’s sake.”

He sought to establish a criticism that operated “within its own specific domains, governed by its own laws,”23 breaking away from the impressionistic tendencies that had characterized previous Brazilian criticism, which tended to be more narrative and literary, more attached to nationalist ideologies and identity disputes.

His defense of abstraction, combined with several other factors, was instrumental in the institutionalization of constructive language in Brazil, extending far beyond the aspirations of the Concrete artists. Pedrosa was able to propose an

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23. PEDROSA, Mário. A forma educadora na arte.

In: ARANTES, Otília (org.). Mário Pedrosa: forma e percepção estética. São Paulo: Edusp, 1995. p. 61-62.

original interpretation of geometric abstraction, typically associated with mathematical rigor, but for the critic, it engaged in a direct dialogue with the artistic production of children, the mentally ill, and the so-called “primitives.” Abstraction was the result of a delicate interplay between the conscious and the unconscious, intertwining objectivity and subjectivity. It is no wonder that years prior he had shown such interest in works by artists such as Alexander Calder and Paul Klee.

Art should be understood as a historical fact but also as a universal force, an impulse and a “vital necessity” that challenges the notion that modern art is merely a sophisticated product of European elites’ progress. Creativity was a common good that belonged to anyone, “regardless of their geographic location, whether it be Papua, Cafuzo [Afro-Brazilian], Russian or Chinese, Black or Yellow, educated or uneducated, balanced or unbalanced.”24 This ultimately questioned the very position of the artist as the privileged holder of the of the tools of creation.

But what would be the social function, from a Marxist critic’s perspective, of an art devoid of realistic themes or plausible indices of reality?

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24. Ibid. p. 46.

Each artist makes their revolution once, but the critic is the restless witness of each revolution. […] The critic thus lives in a permanent revolution.

(Mario Pedrosa, 1986)

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How does abstraction contribute to political consciousness? In Arte e revolução [Art and Revolution], published in 1952 and republished in 1957, the critic sought to explain: Political revolution is underway, and social revolution is progressing regardless. Nothing can stop them. However, the revolution of sensibility, the revolution that will reach the core of the individual, their soul, will only come when people have new eyes to see the world, new senses to understand its tremendous transformations, and intuition to overcome them. This will be the great revolution, the deepest and most lasting one, and it will not be carried out by politicians, even the most radical ones, or by state bureaucrats.25

It was not enough to provide the spectator with socially appealing narratives or beautiful illustrative images, competing with the widespread popular taste for radio and television. It was necessary to reawaken the sensibilities of the modern individual, who was inundated with an increasingly fast flow of information and desensitized by technology.

This required a reeducation of the senses, granting

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25. PEDROSA, Mário. Arte e revolução. Tribuna da Imprensa, Rio de Janeiro, Mar. 29-30, 1952.

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autonomy to interpret the forms of the world – an approach that would find fertile developments in the neo-concrete experiences and their derivatives in the years to come. In other words, art was committed to the challenges posed by language, particularly based on the belief in radical freedom.

However, the 1960s led the critic to be skeptical of this potential for realization as artistic practice increasingly moved away from the structural logic of the avant-gardes, demanding new criteria of analysis and a new shift in direction. After hesitating regarding the advent of Pop Art – the first expression, for the critic, of a “postmodern” art – Pedrosa made a diagnosis of the time, noting a paradigm shift in the nexus between art and culture. In the first half of the 20th century modern art operated through divergences from the symbolic values established by the sociocultural system, the 1960s witnessed a growing pact between art, consumption, and mass culture, further stressing the relationships between capital and labor. It became evident that even disruptive gestures were incorporated into hegemonic structures. Modern art, with its historical

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exhaustion, had become a luxury commodity. Its integration into social life had not occurred as a common good or “vital necessity,” but rather as a fetish and a consumer good, sometimes even as an advertising resource, asserting itself as a form of cultural mystification.

On the other hand, the critic also acknowledged that within this crisis, there was the germination of a “new freedom,” no longer signaled by consensualized structures in the art world, but by a state of invention based on the idea of the experiences and less disconnected from a reflection on ways of life. Works such as those

by Hélio Oiticica and Antonio Manuel revived his profession and challenged his critical perspectives.

After all, art was also an “experimental exercise of freedom,” a laboratory in which it would be possible to test an alternative collective subjectivity, perhaps detached from the dictates of the market.

For Pedrosa, however, such a utopia had an address: the Third World. Unlike the Northern Hemisphere, the oppressed peoples on the periphery of the capitalist world, facing “an open

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future or eternal misery,”26 had the option to forge their own path by diverging from the spirit of imperialism. Furthermore, despite his continuous effort to situate Brazilian art within a broader debate, it is worth emphasizing that the critic persistently insisted on highlighting the roots of his voice. Even when abroad, his criticism was elaborated from Brazil, or rather, from the Third World issues, thus affirming not only a political but also a methodological stance.

In his significant “Discurso aos Tupiniquins ou Nambás” [Speech to the Tupininquim or Nambá Peoples] (1976), Pedrosa concludes by stating that “below the line of the hemisphere saturated with wealth, progress, and culture, life is germinating.

A new art threatens to sprout.”27 This marks the turning point where Pedrosa shifts his interest away from the artistic object as an autonomous product, analyzed solely for its pure plastic values, and redirects his focus towards the labor systems and productions contexts, moving away from the dominant centers to engage with the “primitive.” This interest was never completely disconnected from the development of his own intellectual framework.

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26. PEDROSA, Mário. Discurso aos Tupiniquins ou Nambás. Versus, São Paulo, i. 4, 1976.

27. Ibid.

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Elizabeth Wather, Max Bense, and Mario Pedrosa in a meeting at the São Paulo Biennial, 1960s photo Athayde de Barros collection Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo

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By the end of the 1970s, upon his return to Brazil, Pedrosa dedicated himself to two projects for the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro (MAM/ RJ) that encapsulated his aspirations. In 1978, he co-organized with Lygia Pape the exhibition Alegria de viver, alegria de criar [Joy of Living, Joy of Creating], which aimed to bring together the material production and ways of life of indigenous peoples in Brazil as an example of collectivity.

Unfortunately, the exhibition could not take place due to a devastating fire that occurred at the institution that same year. According to Pedrosa, indigenous people live joyfully because they live in abundance, free from the bondage of work, as the accumulation of wealth is not the purpose of their production. It was, therefore, an attempt to present an alternative productive reference in the face of the crisis of Western artistic conditioning, as a way to reclaim the principle of non-alienated work. The critic was interested in the supposed harmonious relationship between humans and nature, the collective resonance achieved through indigenous production and its “participatory” aspect, although such premises were constructed in his writings through a primitivist fantasy that depicted

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indigenous peoples in a universalist, anonymous, and timeless manner, reflective of his time.

Following the fire, Pedrosa outlined a project for the the museum’s reconstruction. Titled Museum of Origins, the new MAM/RJ would encompass five initiatives: the Museu do Índio, the Museu do Inconsciente, the Museu de Arte Moderna, the Museu do Negro and the Museu de Artes Populares . Each institution would have autonomy to curate its own collection and narrative, and a center of activities would be responsible for establishing connections between the parts.

Unfortunately, the idea did not move forward and, at the time, was poorly understood by artists and the cultural community.

Furthermore, in his later years, Pedrosa focused his efforts on the creation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Although still in its early stages, one can considerer that his vision understood the museum as a space for negotiating differences, a democratic realm par excellence. However, this did not mean disguising inequalities under the guise of a supposed Freyrean racial democracy.

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the next page Mario Pedrosa’s journalist and

international museum membership cards collection Center for Documentation and Memory

of São Paulo State University (Cedem/Unesp)

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On the contrary, each of the five involved parts, simultaneously autonomous and interdependent, should negotiate their own singularity, taking into account that the construction of their identity depends on public and collective agencies, where the relationship between self and other is not stable but interchangeable.

It is not without reason that, at the same time he stated he was no longer an art critic or that “art is not fundamental,”28 Pedrosa outlined one his most radical propositions. Echoes and fragments of that utopian Museu das Origens have resonated in recent decades, gaining even more strength in the present moment, perhaps like a message in a bottle sent to the future. If today the issue of identity is permeated with contradictions (it is not new that the labels of “representativeness” have been widely exploited by neoliberal logic, for which aesthetic repackaging is merely a veneer that allows privileges to remain deeply entrenched, raising a significant challenge in the field of art: the need to radically reposition the interplay between representation and infrastructure), it is undeniable that the growing diversity of agents in

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28. PEDROSA, Mário. A arte não é fundamental: a profissão do intelectual é ser revolucionário...

O Pasquim, Rio de Janeiro, Nov. 12, 1981.

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the Brazilian art scene potentially points to other possible arrangements.

It appears that the brief and temporary denial of criticism (and art) was a dialectical and propositional strategy through which Pedrosa could derive from himself, play on the opposite side of the norm, and engage with the vicissitudes of his time. Once again, he was practicing an ethics of criticism and leaving to us, future generations, his most worthy example to follow.

Pollyana Quintella (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) is a researcher, writer, and curator at the Pinacoteca of São Paulo. She studied at Escola de Belas Artes of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (EBA/UFRJ) and obtained her MA from the Graduate Program in Arts at the Universidade do Estado Rio de Janeiro (PPGArtes/UERJ), with a research on the work of Mario Pedrosa, particularly his projects conceived at MAM Rio in the late 1970s. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at PPGAV/Uerj, dedicating her studies to the relationship between criticism and crisis in the 21st century.

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Mario Pedrosa next to a work by Mario Cravo Júnior at the second São Paulo Biennial photo Unknown author collection Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo

CREDITS

Conceived and produced by Itaú Cultural Consultancy Quito Pedrosa Curated by Marcos Augusto Gonçalves e/and equipe Itaú Cultural Exhibition design Camila Schmidt e/and Lígia Zilbersztejn Acessibility design equipe Itaú Cultural Fundação Itaú board of trustees

President Alfredo Setubal Foundation president Eduardo Saron management of institutional and strategic communication

Manager Ana de Fátima Sousa Coordinator of digital strategy and brand management Renato Corch Photo editing André Seiti Social media Daniela Campos (intern), Jullyanna Salles e/and Victória Pimentel Coordinator of institutional communication Alan Albuquerque Strategic communication William Nunes Itaú Cultural Superintendent Jader Rosa department of visual arts and artwork collection

Manager Sofia Fan Coordinator Juliano Ferreira Research and executive production Naiade Margonar audiovisual and cultural products department

Manager André Furtado Audiovisual coordinator Kety Fernandes Nassar Audiovisual production and executive production Amanda L. da Silva Image capture and editing Teia Documenta (outsourced) Audio capture Raquel Vieira (outsourced) Cultural products coordinator Carlos Costa Editorial production Luciana Araripe Content editing and production Duanne Ribeiro e/and William Nunes

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Proofreading coordination Polyana Lima Proofreading Karina Hambra e/and Rachel Reis (outsourced) Translation Guilherme Ziggy (outsourced) Translation proofreading Denise Yumi (outsourced) Graphic design and visual communication Estúdio Claraboia (outsourced) Graphic production Lilia Góes department of education services and liaison

Manager Valéria Toloi Liaison Manager Tayná Menezes Team Alessandra Constantini, Domenica Antonio, Fabiano Hilario, Matheus Paz, Natasha Marcondes, Victor Soriano e/and Vinícius Magnun Coordinator of education services Mayra Oi Saito Team Ana Beatriz Carvalho (intern), Bianca Martino, Edinho dos Santos, Edson Bismark, Elissa Sanitá Silva, Fernanda Amorim (intern), Joelson Oliveira, Julia Fernandes dos Santos (intern), Matheus Maia, Maya de Paiva, Mônica Abreu Silva, Rafael de Oliveira (intern), Victória de Oliveira, Vítor Luz e/and Vitor Narumi encyclopedia and memory department

Manager Tânia Francisco Rodrigues Memory and research coordinator Felipe Albert Silva Lima Research Caio Meirelles Aguiar e/and Laerte Fernandes Executive production Caio Meirelles Aguiar e/and Laerte Fernandes department of production and infrastructure

Manager Gilberto Labor Coordinator Vinícius Ramos Production Erica Pedrosa, Carlos Eduardo Ferreira Silva, Carmen Fajardo, Iago Germano e/and Katarina Lenomard legal consultancy

Manager Anna Paula Montini Coordinator Daniel Lourenço Team Carlos Garcia

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CREDITS

acknowledgments

Acervo do Centro de Documentação e Memória da Universidade Estadual Paulista (Cedem/Unesp), Antonio Manuel, Aracy Amaral, Arquivo do Museu da Solidariedade Salvador Allende/Fundação Arte e Solidariedade, Biblioteca Latino-Americana Victor Civita, Coleção Roberto Irineu Marinho, Coleção Rose e Alfredo Setubal, Dainis Karepovs, Diana Kolker, Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo/Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo, Fundação Calder, Fundação Oscar Niemeyer, Gláucia Villas Bôas, Isabel Pedrosa, Jones Bergamin, José Castilho, Livia Pedrosa, Lorenzo Mammì, Luiz Antônio de Araújo, Luiza Mader, Lula Wanderley, Marcio Doctors, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Museu de Arte do Rio, Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, Nina Galanternick, Pollyana Quintella, Quito Pedrosa, Ricardo Resende, Sabrina Fontenele e/and TV Cultura Itaú Cultural (IC) and the curators are grateful to all the photographers who granted images and all the artists, successors and collectors who authorized the exhibition and loaned their works to the exhibition.

IC made every effort to find the holders of copyrights on the photographed images/artworks published here. If you identify some work of your authorship, please contact us by email: atendimento@ itaucultural.org.br.

IC has been integrated with the Itaú Foundation. Find out more at fundacaoitau.org.br.

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*Cemap – Cedem/Unesp Centro de Estudos do Movimento Operário Mario Pedrosa (Cemap) – Collection Centro de Documentação e Memória da Universidade Estadual Paulista (Cedem/Unesp)

the previous page Mario Pedrosa

is cheered at the National Meeting for the Foundation of the Workers’ Party (PT), held at Colégio Sion in São Paulo, 1980 photo Juca Martins/OLHAR IMAGEM

Mario Pedrosa [electronic resource] / organization Itaú Cultural. - São Paulo : Itaú Cultural , 2023.

PDF ; 146p.

ISBN: 978-65-88878-80-4

1. Politics. 2.Art criticism. 3. Exhibition - Museum.

4.Visual Arts. I. Instituto Itaú Cultural. II. Fundação Itaú.

III. Título.

CDD 700

Librarian: Ana Luisa Constantino dos Santos - CRB8:10076/O

This publication was composed using the Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro.

#ocupacao #mario pedrosa