EXHIBITION | FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Photos: Renato Parada and Vinicius Stassola
On display from June 24th to August 13th, 2017.
At the opening of a 1505 booklet reproducing Mundus novus, a letter believed to have been written by the Florentine navigator Américo Vespúcio, the first known visual representation of Brazil is printed. In the woodcut image, with the exception of babies in arms, everyone else wears a feather skirt, an outfit that does not exist in any description of the original inhabitants of the Brazilian coast, but which, curiously, fixed on the native’s iconography. It was just the beginning of a long series of distortions that ended up creating the image of Brazil in its first centuries. It is on this aspect that the exhibition ‘First Impressions – The birth of printed culture and its influence on the creation of the image of Brazil’ focuses. The exhibition, which introduced the theme of the issue of creating the image of Brazil through reproductions of historical engravings and enlargements in large format, was held by the Museu da Casa Brasileira, an institution of the São Paulo State Department of Culture, in partnership with Gustavo Piqueira. Based on the designer’s book, ‘Oito Viagens ao Brasil’, the exhibition opened on June 24, 2017, at 2 pm. On the occasion, the book was also launched.
The content of the exhibition and the book presented and discussed the complex amalgamation of industry, art and cultural codes in force that gave rise to the creation of Brazil’s image. A mixture of cavalry novels, medieval bestiaries, religious tensions, economic interests and, above all, productive parameters of the then incipient book industry, whose consolidation took place almost simultaneously with the arrival of Europeans in America and filled their editorial practice with attitudes unthinkable today – how to rearrange people in an illustration or repeat the same image in completely different texts. It is not by chance, therefore, that the first book published about Brazil, the account of the German Hans Staden ‘Two trips to Brazil’, from 1554, appeared in different editions illustrated by elephants, Jesus crucified or Ottoman Turks.
Check records of the opening of the exhibition, which took place on June 24:
Photos: Vinicius Stassola
Framing the content of the show, large extensions of volume three of the ‘Great Journeys’, the collection of stories about the New World published by the Belgian Theodor de Bry who, when rereading the original woodcuts of Hans Staden’s book in exuberant and explicit copper engravings , crystallized the image of Brazil in its first century after the landing of Cabral. This image, in a way, still lingers among us.
After the period on display at the Museu da Casa Brasileira, the exhibition was available at Caixa Cultural Brasília between August 4 and September 10, as part of the Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial.
Eight trips to Brazil
Known for producing books of difficult classification, in which he freely mixes text, image and design, the designer created the box Eight trips to Brazil, with eight books, each bringing their own combination of ancient and contemporary, fiction and history, visual language and writing. It is a true practical demonstration of the possibilities of using printed media: inside the box we find a completely torn object book; a volume bringing a visual narrative with collages on official photographs of presidents and emperors of Brazil; fictional characters who argue among themselves through the various volumes; Hans Staden’s original texts illustrated by contemporary (and not charming) photographs of Ubatuba; woodcuts from Staden’s first edition framing a contemporary fictional text; a comic strip beyond amateur, among other things.
Much of the many images that illustrate the books were photographed directly from the collection of Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita and José Mindlin, which co-edits the box with Editora WMF Martins Fontes. For the exhibition, these images were enlarged on panels almost 4 meters high. At the launch and opening event of the exhibition, the book was sold at a 50% discount, and the first fifty buyers won a poster printed in silkscreen, created from the images in volume 4 of the work.
Highlights in the Media – Print and Online
Diário Oficial | A Tribuna Santos | Folha de S. Paulo | Folha de S. Paulo | Isto é | O Estado de S. Paulo | Olho Mágico | RG
About the Author
Gustavo Piqueira is one of the most awarded graphic designers in the country. In front of his Casa Rex studio, he has won more than 400 international design awards. As an author, he has already released 17 books, such as the “dinner narrative set” Lululux (Lote42 / 2015), the literary-postal-urban experience Valfrido? (Lote42 / 2016), the fiction built from old photos Lord Creptum (Pulo do Gato / 2015), finalist of the last Jabuti award in the youth category, and the “contemporary medieval Bible” Mateus, Marcos, Lucas and João (Edusp / 2014), gospels that exchange Jesus for an anti-cellulite cream.
Opening: June 24, 2017, Saturday at 2pm – free admission
Visitation: until August 13, 2017
Realization: MCB and Casa Rex
Support: Editora WMF Martins Fontes and BBM Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita and José Mindlin – USP
About MCB
The Museum of the Brazilian House, an institution of the Secretariat of Culture and Creative Economy of the State of São Paulo, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020, is dedicated to the preservation and diffusion of the material culture of the Brazilian house, being the only museum in the country specializing in architecture and design. The MCB’s program includes temporary and long-term exhibitions, with an agenda that also includes educational service activities, debates, lectures and publications contextualizing the museum’s vocation for the formation of critical thinking on topics such as architecture, urbanism, housing, economics creativity, urban mobility and sustainability. Among its numerous initiatives, the Design MCB Award stands out, the main segment award in the country held since 1986; and the Casas do Brasil project, to rescue and preserve memory about the rich diversity of living in the country.
Museu da Casa Brasileira
Brig. Faria Lima, 2705 – Jardim Paulistano
Tel .: +55 (11) 3032.3727
