The Rhythm of Macumba: Lívio Abramo’s Engagement with Afro-Brazilian Culture

Abstract

William Hayter’s About Prints includes a woodcut by Brazilian artist Lívio Abramo (1903–1992) and assigns it a prominent place: Abramo’s “Macumba” (1957) is the second illustration in a book that reproduces works by artists whose names we are quick to recognize— Picasso, Chagall, Henry Moore, and Max Ernst. Hayter, of course himself a key figure in the history of modern printmaking, explains that his book aims to present “a sampling of contemporary prints including some extreme experiments” in order to indicate “the enormous variety” of the field. He specifies that the prints chosen were often “provocative and little known” (v).

* Earlier versions of this chapter were read at the meetings of the American Comparative Literature Association (San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 2002) and the Associação Brasileira de Literatura Comparada (Belo Horizonte, Brazil, July 2002), in a lecture series at Binghamton University, to the students of the Master’s in History at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and to the Centro de Estudos Comparativos and the Program in Comparative Literature at the Universidade de Lisboa. I would like to thank Carmen Ferradás and Hilton Silva; Júnia Furtado; Helena Buescu and João Ferreira Duarte for invitations that afforded me rewarding opportunities for dialogue. My audience on these occasions helped me develop my arguments with questions and insightful comments. Dale Tomich contributed his reading skills (and more) to this chapter. I would like to thank Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond for the invitation that started me on the road to writing it and especially for her patience, and grace, na hora da onça beber água. Another very special thank you to Alcione Abramo, who was generous with information and support; Bia Abramo, Hélio Guimarães, César Braga-Pinto, and Rachelle Moore were very helpful in many ways.