Revista de Antropofagia

Revista de Antropofagia

Revista de Antropofagia was a short-lived Brazilian magazine closely associated with the modernist cultural milieu of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, publishing manifestos and essays that engaged debates around national identity, aesthetics, and cultural renewal. The periodical became linked to figures from the Modern Art Week and to intellectual networks spanning universities, theaters, and publishing houses in Brazil, while dialoguing with European avant-garde movements and Latin American indigenist currents.

History and publication

The magazine emerged in the late 1920s amid interactions between proponents of the Semana de Arte Moderna and institutions such as the São Paulo School of Arts and Crafts, the University of São Paulo, the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, and the Biblioteca Nacional. Its run coincided with political and cultural shifts involving the administrations of Washington Luís and Getúlio Vargas and the activities of movements like the Tenente rebellions and the Semana de Arte Moderna, while writers and artists referenced international models from Paris salons, Berlin galleries, London periodicals, and New York journals. Launch events connected contributors with spaces such as Teatro Municipal, Casa Modernista, Café Colombo, and editorial gatherings at Martins & Cia and Livraria Jose Olympio, producing issues whose distribution reached Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador, Belém, and Manaus.

Editorial line and contributors

The editorial line drew on intellectuals and artists associated with names like Oswald de Andrade, Tarsila do Amaral, Mário de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, and Sérgio Milliet, and engaged with poets and critics including Menotti del Picchia, Plínio Salgado, Raul Bopp, and Graça Aranha. Other contributors and correspondents included Patrícia Galvão (Pagu), Heitor Villa-Lobos, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Anita Malfatti, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, Lima Barreto, Monteiro Lobato, Clóvis de Castro, and Flávio de Carvalho, as well as international interlocutors who wrote from Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, and Buenos Aires. The magazine featured essays by scholars and artists linked to institutions such as the Museu Nacional, Instituto Butantan, Academia Brasileira de Letras, and the Escola de Sociologia e Política, with typographers, illustrators, and photographers collaborating from ateliers connected to printers like Imprensa Oficial and Gráfica São Paulo.

Themes and cultural impact

Content combined discussions of national folklore, indigenous iconography, Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions, urban modernity, and industrialization, invoking references to Tupi-Guarani traditions, Quilombo communities, samba from Rio de Janeiro, candomblé practices in Salvador, sertão narratives from Pernambuco, and the Amazonian myths of Belém. Essays and visual works dialogued with European vanguardists such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Guillaume Apollinaire, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Wassily Kandinsky, while also positioning Brazilian culture alongside Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, César Vallejo, José Carlos Mariátegui, and Gabriela Mistral. The magazine influenced theater directors, choreographers, and composers tied to Teatro Municipal, Companhia Brasileira de Teatro, and conservatories where figures like Heitor Villa-Lobos and Arthur Napoleão shaped musical modernism, and it interacted with publishing houses, exhibitions at the Pinacoteca, and pedagogues at the conservatories and academies.

Relationship to Antropofagia movement

The publication articulated principles later termed antropofagia, aligning with manifestos and polemics that referenced Oswald de Andrade's Cannibalist Manifesto alongside dialogues with Modernist manifestos from the Semana de Arte Moderna, the Manifesto Antropófago, and writings circulating in periodicals edited by Mário de Andrade and Raul Bopp. Its position connected to debates on cultural cannibalism in relation to indigenous resistance, colonial legacies from Portugal and Spain, African diaspora legacies via transatlantic routes, and comparisons to Mexican muralism led by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. The magazine fostered exchanges with intellectuals involved in anthropological research at institutions such as Museu Paulista, Museu Nacional, and the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, promoting aesthetic strategies that reframed appropriation, hybridity, and syncretism.

Reception and criticism

Reception among contemporaries ranged from acclaim in avant-garde circles around São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to criticism from conservative journalists, Catholic intellectuals, and academic critics affiliated with the Academia Brasileira de Letras, the Bar Association, and provincial presses in Minas Gerais and Bahia. Debates invoked figures such as Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Darcy Ribeiro, and Celso Furtado in later historiography, and provoked polemics in newspapers like O Estado de S. Paulo, Jornal do Brasil, and Correio da Manhã. Subsequent scholarship has considered the magazine's role in shaping cultural policy discussions under Vargas-era reforms, its resonance with later Tropicália artists like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, and its influence on literary journals, university curricula, art biennials, and museum exhibitions curated in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and Recife.

Category:Brazilian magazines Category:1928 establishments in Brazil Category:1929 disestablishments in Brazil