The Remarkable Curvature of the Mind of Abdias do Nascimento

Abstract

Nascimento transcended the country of his birth and established himself in the minds and hearts of Africans everywhere as a combatant against racism and classism. Abdias do Nascimento was to Brazil what Langston Hughes and Katherine Dunham were to African Americans, a phenomenon of cultural energy that lifted his people to the highest dimensions of art in defiance of a designed degradation of blackness. Abdias grew up as a rebel spirit, as he would often say, in the tradition of his mother, who had called out abusive behavior toward blacks, in a brazenly racist country that had exploited the indigenous and African people for centuries. Thus, he was to become a Malcolm X, Du Bois, and Paul Robeson in the Brazilian context. Combining artistic skill, militant resistance, world knowledge, historical understanding, and an adventurous nature, his active mind did not rest in one field but in several art forms and research areas. He found his first love in the practice of African art and spirituality while creating the Black Experimental Theatre in Rio de Janeiro in the l940s.