Art of Diplomacy

During the height of World War II, Brazil sent 168 paintings to the UK donated by 70 artists from the Brazilian modernist movement, including Candido Portinari, Alfredo Volpi, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, and Oswald de Andrade Filho, to be exhibited in the country’s major art institutions. The exhibition was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London at the end of 1944, and then toured seven British museums until September 1945, remaining one of the largest Brazilian art exhibitions ever organized abroad. The proceeds from the sales of the exhibited works were donated by the artists themselves to the Royal Air Force as their contribution to supporting the fight against Nazism and Fascism: a gesture of cultural diplomacy forgotten for decades. With a cross-cutting montage between Brazil and England, the film showcases museums, artists’ studios such as those of Carlos Scliar and Francisco Rebolo, reconstructing this fascinating story through numerous interviews with artists, their heirs, as well as British museum directors, Brazilian art historians Aracy Amaral and Dawn Adès, Professor of Brazilian Studies Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, and the Brazilian Embassy diplomat in the United Kingdom, Hayle Melim Gadelha. The documentary reveals an art that remains not well known in Europe today, characterized by an aesthetic vibrancy in which each artist had a distinct voice, a unique artistic quality, and a very different style, emphasizing how, even though the concept of soft power was coined later, the 1944 exhibition can be seen as a significant gesture in international relations.