Sérgio Milliet and Alexander Calder: the seduction of abstract art

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2022vol42n2p65

Keywords:

Sérgio Milliet, Alexander Calder, Criticism, Art

Abstract

The most important proposal of this article is to put in to the light the critical thinking of Sérgio Milliet, one of the protagonists of São Paulo Modernism and who has been little remembered since his activities as a critic ceased in November 9th 1966, the day of his death. A big part of his critical work, written from 1940 to 1956 for O Estado de S. Paulo, was published in the ten books that composes the Diário Crítico (1981-1982) and which is the corpus of my work. More specifically, I will study Milliet’s reflections on the visual arts, in which he first defends a human art and, therefore, in his understanding, figurative art, in an opposite and critical sense of abstract art. In a second moment, associated to the discovery of Alexander Calder’s work, Milliet starts to praise abstraction, even becoming the director of the II, III and IV Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, from 1953 to 1957, events with lots of abstract works and which had repercussions on the production of Brazilian artists.

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Author Biography

Laura Brandini, UEL

Doutorado, em co-tutela, Universidade de São Paulo e Université de Genève.

Docente da Universidade Estadual de Londrina

References

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Published

2022-12-30

How to Cite

Brandini, Laura. “Sérgio Milliet and Alexander Calder: the Seduction of Abstract Art”. Terra Roxa E Outras Terras: Revista De Estudos Literários, vol. 42, no. 2, Dec. 2022, pp. 65-76, doi:10.5433/1678-2054.2022vol42n2p65.