Abdias Nascimento: Interpreter of Brazil

Abdias Nascimento (Brazil, 1914–2011) was an artist, playwright, intellectual, and Pan-African activist whose multidisciplinary work across art and politics articulated a sustained vision of a more just Brazil. Interpreter of Brazil is the first US-based survey to comprehensively examine the full range of his work, positioning him as a key figure in modern and contemporary art global narratives.

Working first in Brazil through theater and activism, and later in exile in the US—where his painting practice fully flourished—Nascimento developed a visual language rooted in Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions and expanded through engagement with Pan-African thought and Black diasporic artistic networks. He mobilized painting as a vehicle for cultural affirmation, historical reclamation, and resistance to racial oppression.

Interpreter of Brazil traces this trajectory through a broad selection of paintings—many rarely or never before seen in the US—alongside ephemera, photographs, and artworks from his Teatro Experimental do Negro (Black Experimental Theater) and Museu de Arte Negra (Black Art Museum), as well as a depth of archival material.