In the 1950s, Rubem Valentim appropriated geometric abstraction in creating complex compositions that redesigned and reconfigured Afro-Atlantic symbols, emblems and references in paintings, sculptures and engravings. During this process, the artist transformed the European artistic languages then dominating much of the art being produced in Brazil and worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s (geometric abstraction, concretism and constructivism) by submitting them to African references, especially patterns and designs that represented the Afro-Brazilian Orishas, such as Shango’s double headed axe, Oshosi’s arrow and Osanyin’s staffs. In Composição 12, Valentim paints near-symmetric geometric elements representing various Afro-Brazilian religious symbols. The central semicircle refers to the clay bowl used for ritualistic offerings, while the red bands at the top and bottom of the painting stand for Orum, the world of the Orishas, and Aiê, the mundane world, respectively. The arrows to the sides of the central column symbolize the offerings rising upwards, and the central column, the power of Eshu—the Orisha responsible for communication between the divine and the terrestrial. In his 1928 “Manifesto antropófago” [Anthropophagic Manifesto], a key text of Brazilian modernism, Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954) poetically proposed a modus operandi for the Brazilian intellectual and artist: devour the European cultural legacy and metabolize it into a Brazilian hybrid, comprised of indigenous, African and European references. Valentim is one of the artists who most completely and ambitiously brought this project to fruition.

— Adriano Pedrosa

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