Abdias do Nascimento

Abdias do Nascimento (March 14, 1914 – May 23, 2011 ) was a prominent African Brazilian scholar, artist, and politician. He served as Rio de Janeiro State Secretary for the Defense and Promotion of Afro-Brazilian People and Secretary of Human Rights and Citizenship. While working as curator of the Black Arts Museum project, he began developing his own creative work (painting), and from 1968 on, he exhibited widely in the U.S., Brazil and abroad. He received national and international honors for his work, including UNESCO's special Toussaint Louverture Award for contribution to the fight against racism, granted to him and to poet Aimé Césaire in 2004. He was officially nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Early life

Born in Franca, São Paulo state, Nascimento attended public school as a child and joined the military in 1929. In the 1930s Nascimento was a member of the Brazilian Integralist Action, a fascist party. With intense activity in theatrical production, TEN also was responsible for stellar initiatives in black activism, such as the National Convention of Brazilian Blacks (1945–46), the Conference of Brazilian Blacks (1949), and the First Congress of Brazilian Blacks (1950). A resolution of the 1950 congress advocated the need for a Black Arts Museum in Brazil, and the Black Experimental Theater embraced the project. Many artists donated works and the first exhibition was held in 1968 at Rio de Janeiro's Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound). The Black Experimental Theater organized the cast for the play Orfeu da Conceição, by Vinicius de Moraes, which was later adapted into the motion picture Black Orpheus, directed by Marcel Camus.

Life in exile Nascimento became a leader in Brazil's black movement, and was forced into exile by the military regime in 1968. From 1968 to 1981 Nascimento was very active in the international Pan-African Movement and was elected vice-president and Coordinator of the Third Congress of Black Culture in the Americas. For the next decade Nascimento was a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, including the Yale School of Drama (1969–1971), and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, where he founded the chair in African Cultures in the New World, Puerto Rican Studies Program in 1971.

Return to Brazil

Nascimento returned to Brazil in 1983 and was elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT). There, his focus was supporting legislation to address racial problems. In 1994 he was elected to the Senate and served until 1999. In 2004 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, and the Universidade Federal da Bahia. A biography of Nascimento by the journalist Sandra Almada was published in 2009 as part of the Retratos do Brasil Negro series.

Selected publications

"Africans in Brazil: a Pan-African perspective" (1997) "Orixás: os deuses vivos da Africa" (Orishas: the living gods of Africa in Brazil) (1995) "Race and ethnicity in Latin America – African culture in Brazilian art" (1994) "Brazil, mixture or massacre? Essays in the genocide of a Black people" (1989) "Sortilege" (black mystery) (1978) "Racial Democracy in Brazil, Myth or Reality?: A Dossier of Brazilian Racism" (1977)

Filmography Cinema de Preto (2005) Cinco vezes Favela (1962) Terra da Perdição (1962) Homem do Sputnik, O (1959)