Oswaldo Costa's 1928 Critique Reveals Fractures in São Paulo Modernism Narrative

The intellectual Oswaldo Costa, writing in the Revista de Antropofagia in 1928, sharply criticized the visual arts trajectory of São Paulo modernism, challenging its myth of a seamless evolution from Anita Malfatti to the city's major museums. Costa, a critic for the Correio Paulistano who used the pseudonym Antônio Raposo, argued that the 1922 Modern Art Week had stagnated into a morass of cronyism and lack of creativity. He specifically disparaged sculptor Victor Brecheret's later work as mediocre pastiche and questioned the quality of a painting by Anita Malfatti purchased with state support. This critique, largely overlooked by later scholars like Aracy Amaral and Augusto de Campos, exposed significant internal rifts. Contemporaneous articles by Menotti Del Picchia (writing as Helios) in 1929 documented a "crisis in modernism," noting attacks on Brecheret and Malfatti and the absence of key figures from Antropofagia events. These documented conflicts, occurring between the symbolic dates of 1922 and the 1947/48 founding of MASP and MAM-SP, contradict the triumphant, unified narrative later constructed by figures like Paulo Mendes de Almeida in his book "De Anita ao Museu." Even Oswald de Andrade's later writings, while acknowledging a 1928 "divider of waters," ultimately reaffirmed the continuity and institutional triumph of the 1922 modernist project.