The idea of the ART exhibition discussed in this article stemmed from the initiative of artists born or living in Brazil, a group formed by painters who tried, each in his own way, to break free from imported academic influences and forge a Brazilian cultural identity and become known abroad. The year is 1944, in Rio de Janeiro, capital of the Republic at the time, and the proposal was quickly embraced by the then Foreign Minister of Getúlio Vargas, Oswaldo Aranha. Among the Minister’s concerns was the definition of the role of Brazil in the Post-war period.
The Second World War was unfolding during this time period, albeit heading towards its end. The Brazilian Minister, who had convinced Vargas that Brazil should assume a pro-allies position by clearly opposing the Axis powers, was adamant that the Brazilian army soldiers headed to Europe in order to make a stand as part of the fight against Germany. We didn’t have the support of the United Kingdom, much less receptive to our participation – which they thought to be unnecessary – than the United States, who were very supportive of Brazil, as long as they were given the military base in the coastal city of Natal, as they were increasingly gaining space in the world political arena. The battlefield, and the scenario of many human losses, was, however, still in Europe. And England, as we know, played a key role in the great victory of the allies, an outcome that by then had become quite predictable. For Brazil, It was also an opportunity to overcome a diplomatically sensitive issue involving the apprehension, by England, of a German vessel laden with weapons purchased by the country before the war. The vessel was heading to Rio de Janeiro and the goods only arrived in the Brazilian territory much later, with the mediation of the United States.
It turns out that Aranha’s idea, which was bluntly announced to the press, was that, in parallel with the sending of the Brazilian soldiers to Italy in November of 1944, England hosted an exhibition of Brazilian painters and the proceeds of the event should be donated to the British Royal Air Force – RAF – in recognition of the UK’s efforts in war. This symbolic gesture of moral support led the British Council and the British Embassy, unsuspecting and embarrassed, to accept and take charge of the procedures and costs involved in the shipment of the works. The exhibition gathering 168 paintings would initially be held at the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro. Then, the selection of works of 70 artists, among which were Portinari, Lasar Segall, Pancetti, Volpi, Clovis Graciano, Di Cavalcanti, Cícero Dias, Tarsila do Amaral, Iberê Camargo and Heitor dos Prazeres, and others, finally traveled to London, being exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts between November 23 and December 03, 1944. Then, they were on display at the White Chapel and toured seven cities of the United Kingdom, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Norwich. In Norwich, the exhibition, which had been seen by 2.600 people in London, was attended in Norwich by no less than 14 thousand visitors.
The fact that the event is little recalled and known today is a gap in the history of Brazilian modern art and the information about the exhibition in London in 1944 was passed to the Ambassador of Brazil in England, Roberto Jaguaribe in 2013 by the Rio-based art dealer Afonso Costa. And from then on, the diplomat Hayle Gadelha, cultural attaché serving the Brazilian Embassy, took up a detailed, slow and, why not to say, archaeological investigation on the event. His idea is that the exhibit becomes theoretically relevant at King’s College, institution that has a doctoral research project on the relation between the 1944 show and Brazil’s diplomatic relations at the time.
This project is expected to enable the reopening of the exhibit as desired by the Ambassador Jaguaribe. The project has been recently resumed by the current Ambassador Eduardo Santos. To this end, the paintings need to be found. The cultural attaché has located 50 of them, which were made part of private or small museum collections in the cities where these pieces were displayed at the time. It is known that 25 of them are still in England. It is also known that the unsold pieces were not featured in the first contemporary art exhibit at UNESCO in 1946, following the foundation of the institution, and seem to be spread over several parts of the world, which is an indication of that there is a lot of hard work ahead.
We were told by the diplomat whose main objective is to revisit the original exhibit, that the exhibition catalog features introductory texts by Rubens Navarro and also by Sacheverel Sitwell, controversial figure of the bohemian and famous Bloomsbury Group, who gives no praise, but rather spews prejudiced comments about the Brazilian painters. We were also told that in order to be admitted in the Royal Academy of Arts, who are not fond of “isms” such as modernism, it was necessary that then Chancellor and later British Prime Minister, Anthony End, personally called the director of the English institution, supporter of the classicism and Pre-Raphaelites, to cede the space. The request was only granted under the condition that it was made very clear that the selection of the paintings had not been made by the curators of the Academy of Arts. And it became evident”, according to the Brazilian cultural attaché, “that there was a great distance between the Brazilian sense of belonging to a European / French tradition and the British perception, who did not attribute great artistic value to the works shipped to England.”
Although not highly successful in terms of sales and critic, this exhibition can be considered as the first step taken by Brazilian artists abroad. And, as also says the diplomat, “from then on, Brazil and its art reached another level of recognition in these lands.” A land, by the way, very troubled at the end of the war, which is one of the reasons why finding spaces and availability for exhibitions was a challenging task.
Portinari, with two paintings, fairly known in the art circuit of the United States, and with whom we maintained the so-called good neighbor policy, and Lasar Segall, because he was a Central European artist, were among the few who received praise from the critic, particularly in Edinburgh. Segall participated with Lucy com Flor, one of the many portraits of the young artist Lucy Citti Ferreira. A reference dated 1959 found behind a photograph of that work indicates that one of the pieces of that same series would be at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and another one in the collection of a certain Dr. K. Arnold in São Paulo. Also participating in the exhibition was the famous Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and her husband, Arpad Szenes, who lived in Brazil. One of the two exhibited paintings by Portinari was purchased by the diplomat Hugo Gouthier for 180 pounds. Renowned collector and ambassador to Rome a decade later, he had the urge to write a letter to Portinari telling him that the exhibition was being very successful and explaining that he had purchased “inserto na página 1 do catálogo” because he found it admirable and “also to avoid that any person acquired the work and hung it on some apartment wall.” This document is part of the fascinating findings of the cultural attaché.
There were no buyers for many of the works, including those of Tarsila and Iberê and it should be enough to say that one work of Guignard was sold for nine pounds, a Cicero Dias for three pounds and a Djanira, for two pounds. Despite the prejudices, photos found of the event show that the salons of the show were attended by a large number of people. Including one in which the Duchess of Kent makes a tour accompanied by the then ambassador Souza Leão. There are also records that Queen Elizabeth, mother of the current sovereign, visited the exhibition accompanied by a then very young Princess Margaret. 
Perhaps in anticipation of what would be, in the future, a real and true recognition of the quality of our architecture, a set of 162 photographs of Brazilian architecture was made part of the exhibit. The photographs had been previously exhibited at MoMa in New York and were brought to England by the Anglo-Brazilian Society. Initially, despite the lack of replicas, the photos were much better received by the public and critic than the paintings. Most likely, according to the cultural attaché, this is because “they had been previously validated by the Americans”. The photographs featured an array of images that ranged from our colonial architecture to the modern architecture of Lucio Costa, with the Capanema Palace – then Ministry of Culture.
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