Arts and Culture in Brazil

Brazil is a cultural melting pot. Brazilian culture has been shaped not only by the Portuguese, who first settled the country, but also by Brazil’s native Indians, the considerable African population, and other settlers from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The varied heritages have been woven together so intricately, and transformed so radically by the shared climate, geography and history, that something entirely new has emerged.

Brazil’s language was Portuguese from the beginning. It still is, albeit progressively softer and more musical version of the mother tongue, which eventually absorbed many African, Amerindian, Arab, American, and other European words.    

During most of the first four centuries after the Portuguese settled in Brazil, the inhabitants looked toward Europe for inspiration. With few exceptions, their buildings, paintings, and writings closely followed Portuguese styles. But during the 18th century gold boom, many cities in the state of Minas Geris prospered and had a spate of building. The city of Euro Presto, capital of the region at that time, is a typical example. Its steep streets are still paved with blocks of iron slate and granite. Many tourists go there every year, attracted by its thirteen splendid churches, built in the baroque and rococo styles; some with interiors almost entirely covered in get was in Euro Presto that a genius of American colonial sculpture and architecture was born in 1738. His name was Antonio Francisco Lisbon, but he was best known by the nickname of "O Aleijadinho", or The Little Cripple, because of the progressive debilitating disease that attacked him in middle age, withering his fingers and disfiguring his face. His terrible afflictions notwithstanding, he went on working tirelessly turning out scores of sculptures. He was already an old man when he created his masterpiece, a series of sculptures for the Sanctuary of Bum Jesus de Matozinhos, at Congo has, a small town near Euro Presto. Old leaf.

In the realm of literature, the first important Brazilian works were written by Machado de Assisi. As the 19th century drew to a close, he wrote a succession of novels whose skeptical and ironic tone disguised a fine sensitivity toward the human condition. Several of his books have been translated into English.

Castro Alves was the first really popular poet in Brazil. The son of a slave, his great abolitionist poem "Voices of Africa" is still recited in family gatherings and public meetings.

For all their individual talent, Machado de Assis’ and Castro Alves’ works did not add up to a national school. Most of the other writers of their time tended to be strongly Eurocentric. It was only after Brazil became a republic in 1889 that the literary search for the country’s soul began in earnest.

The Week Modern Art Week of 1922, an artistic symposium held in the city of São Paulo, showed that Brazilian musicians, painters, and writers were ready to forge a new and strong national identity.

Although he was born in Rio de Janeiro, Heritors Villa-Lobos, who was to become Brazil’s foremost classic composer, was drawn toward Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian themes. By no means, however, all of his work is dominated by percussion rhythms. Much of it is subtle and elusive, such as the Bahamas Brassieres number 5.

The modernist movement set off a flood of talented painters. The foremost among them was Candida Primary. An immensely versatile figure, Pertinacity painted most often in a stylized form of realism that conferred majesty even on everyday subjects. His images - coffee plantations and peasants in the northeast, for example – were unmistakably Brazilian.

Brazil’s spectacular modern architecture is one of the most potent expressions of its 20th century artistic confidence. A key figure in the nation’s architectural development was Lucien Costa.
     It was he who, at the end of the 1950’s, drew up the master plan for the new capital of Brasília. The buildings within his grand design were executed by another world famous architect, Oscar Niemeyer, and were acclaimed by critics and colleagues as highly original masterpieces of contemporary architecture.

简要说明：

这篇文章主要介绍了巴西这个国家的人文情况，通过此文大家可以了解到：

一：巴西是一个大熔炉的国家，其文化不只是被西班牙的文化影响，而且还要受到印地安文化，欧洲文化，亚洲文化的影响。

二：通过这篇文章我们能够知道再巴西的几位名人，几位对巴西历史构成重大影响的几位名人

三；相信读过此文之后，大家会对巴西有个全面的认识。