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Vicente do Rego Monteiro
(Recife, 1899 - 1970)

«The Pernabucano Vicente Do Rego Monteiro started to practice in Paris a post-cubism with chromatic and synthetic economy in his stylized lines»¹, that is how the historian Aracy Amaral defined this artist’s works.This characteristic image that talks intimately at the same time with his colleague, the sculptor Victor Brecheret, is the result of a formation procedure that began thereafter 1908 in the National School of Bellas Artes in Rio de Janeiro and continues in Paris after 1911.Between this year and 1914 he stays in the French city with his family.He follows the model of other artists that found free ateliers the resources to form a new point of view.In his case, he studied at the Colarossi, Julien and the Chaumiére Academy.However, the trajectory of his formation always exceeded established institutions.His devotional visits to museums, collections, samples, other artist’s workshops and his participation in assemblies in cafés, completed the task and offered another insertion to the travellers of the peripheral areas of the metropolis.During this years in the process of modern art Paris was freed from the cubist battle that place in scene certain aspects of a movement that shocked the notion of reality as well as the canonical conventions of the occidental representation.

Rego Montiero, in contact this cause participated in the Salón de los Independientes of 1913 and in several others, the following years.Likewise in his Parisian drift, participated in encounters with Amadeo Modigliani, Fernad Leger, Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Louis Marcoussis intergrading himself as one more within this modern movement.This activity will be interrupted by War World I.It is actually in 1915 when Rego returns to settle in Rio de Janeiro and to develop his work in the city, Recife and San Pablo

The exposition of the painter Lituano in 1913, integrated to the Berlinishcher Secession and joined to the group of the expressionists artists Die Brüke, Lasar Segall and the presence of Anita Malfatti who has had recently return from Paris, accompany by a group of critics that was going to establish incipiently, were the signals for the change.

Rego exposed for the first time in San Pablo in 1920; in this occasion he was able to meet those who were more pervious to the modern art as well as the artists, poets and intellectuals that were already working for this promotion.Among them: Anita Malfatti, Emmiliano di Cavalcanti, and Victor Brecheret.

In 1920 he starts a recognition process of his own by devoting himself to the arte marajoara that hold the collection of National Museum of Quinta da Boa Vista in Recife.This move is part of the mandate of modern art to return to look at the primitive art, but it is also rooted in a particular process in Brazil, where modern art and construction of the identity are in synchrony.In this sense and as part of such development, Rego’s aesthetic searches were linked into what few years later Guilherme de Almeida described and propose as the way to follow in his text «Brazilian».There he pointed out that «the intelligent spirit of our men is escaping from that unilateral European vision (because) what is not interesting is ourselves» and he further adds: «modern spirit? No, ´Brazilian` spirit. (…) For the first time in Brazil people are conscious of being Brazilian. This remembrance is the most beautiful and most significant celebration of our first century of an autonomous life»².

The need to establish a new look in his forms as well as on the senses formed part of what condensed the initial Semana de Arte Moderno of San Pablo, done in February 1922.In it, artists, writers, musicians, poets, intellectuals put in place the modern movement in Brazil.Despite that he was again in Paris, Rego Monteiro, participates of the week of the 22.He had left eight works with his friend, the writer and critic Ronald de Varvalho (1893-1935) with whom he had had contact the previous year due to his participation in the ballet Legendas, Crenças e Talismãs dos Indios do Amazonas, held place at the Triano Theatre of Rio de Janeiro.To this experience others are added that are related to his roots, as the designs for the masks and the dummy models for the ballet legends Indiennes de l’Amazonie done in 1923.In this second stay in Paris he joins with Leonce Rosenberg and steps forward to form part of the establishment of the artist of his gallery and the magazine L’Effort ModerneLikewise in 1930 he participated in Joaquin Torres Garcia’s exposition organized in the Zak Gallery as the first collective proof of modern artists in Paris.

In great effort to join different artists of the modern movement and moreover to have a place among them, Rego Monteiro arranges and takes to Brazil what would be qualified by the Brazilian historian Walter Zannini as the first indication of the international modern art in Brazil.There were seen Picasso, Leger, Braque, Miróm, Severini works, next to the ones of the Brazilian Amaral and even Rego Monteiro.

The task of the artist continues and is broaden in poetry works and book and magazine productions, following the course of modern art and literature in Brazil as well as in France since he alternated his life, after twenty years old and thereafter until his death between two destines. D. W.

(1) ARACY AMARAL, «Del pre modernismo a la Bienal: brazilian painting (1900-1950)» in Latin American Painting, Buenos Aires, Velox Editions, 1999, p. 33.

(2) GUILHERME DE ALMEIDA, «Brasilianidad» in Era nova, Parahiba, October 18 1925 (from the writings of Horacio de Almeida, Art and Arquitectura of Brazilian , compilation and prologue Aracy Amaral, Caracas, Ayacucho Library, 1978.pp.151 and 153.)