ABSTRACT
In February 1922 a group of iconoclastic young Brazilian writers, artists and intellectuals gathered in Sao Paulo's Municipal Theater, noisily declared the country's artistic independence, and officially inaugurated what has since become known as the modernist movement, or simply put, Brazilian modernism. From the outset Brazilian modernism was a heterogeneous movement encompassing a multiplicity of aesthetic, cultural, social, and political proposals. Sociologist Renato Ortiz has suggested that modernism, directly imported from Europe, was "out of place" in Brazil since it proposed modernity without modernization. Arising at the outset of a decade of social, political, and economic transition, modernism was in fact a cultural expression of the transformation and modernization of Brazilian society. Modernism sought to destroy the rigidly stratified norms of its literary predecessors and at the same time create a new Brazilian literature which was at once up to date with the most advanced trends in Europe and an expression of Brazil's individuality.
