oaquim Inojosa and the promotion of Modernism in Argentina: Letters from Bráulio Sánchez-Sáez and Luis Emilio Soto (1925)

Abstract

When talking about the cultural effervescence that took place in Recife in the mid-1920s, we cannot forget Joaquim Inojosa, a journalist and law student at the Law School of Recife, who, in 1924, wrote the book A Arte Moderna, a letter/pamphlet that had repercussions throughout the Northeast of Brazil. In 1925, Inojosa published O Brasil Brasileiro. In this text, the author invites his generation to make a “Brazilian” styled art before the more powerful foreigner forced us into accepting one that did not belong to us. We cannot overlook the historical value of these works, especially the Movimento Modernista em Pernambuco, which consists of a large dossier which brings to light chronicles, press articles and the most important subject for our study, that is, his correspondence with the two Argentinian writers that are emphasized here: Bráulio Sánchez-Sáez and Luis Emilio Soto, addressing the role of Joaquim Inojosa in the dissemination of Modernism in Argentina. We perceive that there was the establishment of a social network between Câmara Cascudo, Inojosa, Sáez and Soto, through which themes, projects and intentions were shared. Indeed, we acknowledge that, throughout the first half of the 20th century, it is possible to testify the birth of the perception that Spanish America was able to develop its own “intellectual meridians”, and that its nations could seek inspiration and reference in each other and not just in the Old World, whose model was, for a long time, taken as the only possibility of overcoming the local “barbarism”