Sleek words: Art Deco and Brazilian Modernism

I explore Art Deco in the Brazilian Modernist movement during the 1920s. Art Deco is a decorative arts style that rose to global prominence during this decade and its proponents adopted and adapted the style in order to nationalize it; in the case of Brazil, the style became nationalized primarily by means of the application of indigenous motifs. The Brazilian Modernists created their own manifestations of the style, particularly in illustration and graphic design. I make this analysis by utilizing primary source materials to demonstrate the style's prominence in Brazilian Modernism and by exploring the handcrafted and mechanical techniques used to produce the movement's printed texts.;I explore the origins of the Art Deco style and the decorative arts field and determine the sources for the style, specifically avant-garde, primitivist, and erotic sources, to demonstrate the style's elasticity. Its elasticity allowed it to be nationalized on a global scale during the 1920s; by the 1930s, however, many fascist-leaning forces co-opted the style for their own projects. I examine the architectural field in the Brazil during the 1920s. Art Deco was a popular style and skyscrapers rapidly appeared in Rio de Janeiro with Art Deco ornamentation. I link the rapid dissemination of the style to a similar architectural style in the region, the Neocolonial Style.;I examine the origins of both styles to question their claims to national "authenticity". I explore Art Deco in Brazilian Modernist illustration and graphic design and trace the chronology of the printing press in Brazil. The chronology is crucial to understanding the speed with which these changes in illustration and graphic design took place in a country that had experienced centuries of print culture stagnation. My final chapter explores several books of two prominent Brazilian Modernists, Oswald de Andrade and Vicente do Rego Monteiro. The works I explore are little studied in literary criticism and I utilize the first editions of these works to demonstrate the differences between the first and later editions. My goal is to establish that new printing technologies were just as essential as the final visual product in Brazilian Modernist printed production.