Assistant Professor of Art History
Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
“Abstract Painting and Diaspora in Brazilian Postwar Art”
This paper examines the evolution of postwar Brazilian abstract art considering in particular how Japanese immigrant artists negotiated between the influences of Japanese artistic and cultural traditions, the Brazilian debates between the concrete and informalist art schools, and the global proliferation of abstraction after the Second World War. Japanese Brazilian artists did not fit neatly into the Western model of artmaking, and moreover, called into question the national model at the center of the discipline of art history. Applying diaspora theory to the study of their art, I analyze their work as a way to de-center the U.S. narrative about postwar abstract art.
