the mural artist Eduardo Kobra was one of the interviewees for the special CNN Brazil regarding the 1922 Modern Art Week.
With works spread across several countries and author of the largest graffiti murals in the world – Etnias, in Rio de Janeiro, and another work in honor of chocolate, on Rodovia Castello Branco, in São Paulo -, the São Paulo native says that at the beginning of his working with street art in the 1980s, he did not understand how the modernist movement in Brazil that began in the 1920s had so much influence on his life.
“In 1987, I had references from many other artists, but I had to break that at some point so that I could bring more of my origins, what I am, my history. Today, I understand how the Week of 22 contributed to this, to bringing all these reflections to light. It showed how it was necessary to create your own path, to develop your work within what you believe in”, says Kobra.
For him, the movement launched by names like Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Villa-Lobos, and many others, showed that “art can be made by everyone, for everyone, and in many different ways”.
“I can still draw a parallel in relation to my work, in relation to street art. So many and so many places I arrived to paint, first world countries, where people were against it, they didn’t understand what I was painting. They called me a vagabond, they didn’t understand the expression”, he says, making a parallel with the Semana de 22, when artists were booed and criticized because the public did not understand what was being presented at the Municipal Theater.
Kobra believes that the desire to be modern meant that artists wanted to update themselves, seek an identity and that “this raised the level of the arts in Brazil globally”.
In addition, street art, according to him, wants to “add value and transform the place where the work is being carried out”. And most importantly: bring art to everyone. “Street art is a public work. I take what I experienced on the periphery, in the communities. I do not believe in art separate from the people.”
Check out the full interview in the video above.
Source: CNN Brasil
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