“I am merely a painter of Black art. I don’t want to connect my work to the canons of formal art.”
Born to impoverished parents in Franca, São Paulo, Abdias Nascimento became a celebrated figure in Brazil, primarily for his contributions to politics and the arts. He founded the Black Experimental Theatre (Teatro Experimental do Negro) in 1944, the journal Quilombo in 1948, and the foundations for what would become the Museum of Black Art (Museu da Arte Negra) in 1950. It was in 1968 that Nascimento would begin his first series of paintings as a self-taught artist in his Copacabana apartment.
That same year, the artist fled the increasingly repressive Brazilian dictatorship (1964–85), which began targeting artists, activists, and university students in particular after 1968. Nascimento moved to New York City with his paintings, where several galleries and museums immediately took notice. In 1969, he had four solo exhibitions, including at the Harlem Art Gallery and Yale’s School of Art and Architecture. In 1973, he had a solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In the exhibition catalogue, Brazilian activist and professor Guerreiro Ramos noted, “Nascimento’s canvases are touched by an intention of transcending painting itself.”
Characterized by symbolism and geometric abstraction, his compositions consisted of blocks of uniform values, containers for Afro-Brazilian and Pan-African symbols. These included orixás (Yoruba deities) and abstracted spiritual symbols connected to African belief systems that were preserved by the descendants of enslaved Africans. Motifs across Nascimento’s work include the Sankofa bird, symbolizing a diasporic orientation toward Africa, the oshe, the double-headed ax wielded in celebration of the deity Xangô, and Oxumaré, the rainbow serpent that holds power over umbilical cords and continuities. For Nascimento, these symbols were integral to the contemporary Afro-Brazilian identity, not merely historical references.
Throughout his career, Nascimento participated in various Pan-African congresses across the continent. In 1974, he attended the Sixth Annual Pan-African Congress in Tanzania as the only participant from South America. Due to his outspoken defense of Pan-African unity, Brazilian authorities blocked his participation in the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac ’77) and removed him from the Brazilian delegation.
For Nascimento, formal methods of art history could not capture the essence of his paintings. “My paintings are not only concerned with aesthetic forms, the distribution of volumes in space or the relative tones of colors. What is important to me are Afro-Brazilian…myths, religious history, legends…in short, the history and gods of the religion exiled with my ancestors.” Through his works, he sought to document Black diasporic culture, not engage in formalism. Nascimento was concerned that, if the formal elements of his work were to take over art history narratives, then the spiritual power of the symbols themselves might be lost.
In Facade of a Temple (1972) the Sankofa bird, a symbol of an orientation toward Africa, balances on a symmetrical target vector, the cocked head of the bird screaming out to the African captives. The Oxumaré, the rainbow serpent of continuity, finds its way back to its origin. The open eyes, symbolizing spiritual power beyond the visible world, rest over geometric triangles. And the Ori, the head in Yoruba traditions, is cut open, allowing an orixá deity to mount it. These are symbologies that Nascimento feared could be lost if African aesthetics were relegated to the past or discounted as mere mythology. “My orixás are not immobilized by time and space. They are forces of the present.”
Margarita Lila Rosa, independent scholar, 2024
Note: Opening quote is from Abdias do Nascimento. “Em busca de suas raízes,” JB, (1975): 234.
