Abstract
In the 1950s, Mário Pedro claimed Alfredo Volpi to be the greatest national painter and a master to be followed by younger artists. This was a conflict-ridden process, which put at stake the old canons of Brazilian modernism and also the way in which the history of national art was written. Following this process, we also come face-to-face with the mechanism responsible for mobilizing the presence of people, the persistence of national values and the importance of cities in the Brazilian artistic field.
Keywords:
Concrete art; Alfredo Volpi; Mário Pedrosa; modernism; artistic field