Vicente do Rego Monteiro

The three paintings by Vicente do Rego Monteiro entitled Indigenous Composition that you see here are probably the first abstract works in Brazilian painting. Only a handful of such non-representational works by Monteiro are known. In other paintings by the artist, the colour scheme in particular suggests indigenous influences, whereas here Monteiro explores the mostly geometric-abstract decorations of Marajoara ceramics. He discovered them in the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and began to carefully copy the decorative elements.

In 1923, Monteiro illustrated the book Legends, Beliefs and Talismans of the Amazon Indians by Pierre Louis Duchartre. In his illustrations, he also used Marajoara forms and symbols and compared them with those of other cultures. For example, the three parallel wavy lines of the painting reappear. They are interpreted as a symbol of water or the sea. This abstract composition could therefore represent a landscape or even tell a story.

Alongside these influences and transformations from indigenous cultures and visual languages, the influence of European abstraction is also evident. The extent to which Monteiro interweaves different elements of Brazilian and European culture can be seen in another book: in 1925, Monteiro published Some Faces of Paris, in which he poetically and satirically juxtaposes the European and the South American. The book begins as follows:

“One day a wild chieftain from the jungle came to Paris incognito. He soon returned home, bored by all the grandeur.”