Literary Narratives in exhibition: a curatorship of the illustrated works of the Sociedade dos Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil
Society of One Hundred Bibliophiles of Brazil; Curation; Book Illustration; Literature and art.
This dissertation presents a curatorship of excerpts, in an exhibition format, of illustrated literary works from the collection of the Sociedade dos Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil (Society of the One Hundred Bibliophiles of Brazil, SCBB), an aristocratic fraternity of book collectors based in Rio de Janeiro, created and managed by the industrialist Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya (1894-1968). SCBB produced 23 books between 1943 (Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis, illustrated by Cândido Portinari) and 1969 (O compadre de Ogum, by Jorge Amado, illustrated by Mário Cravo Júnior), in a selection of works that intended to achieve a panorama of “brazilianness” based on aesthetic refinement, adorned by some of the best artists active at the time, in limited and exclusive editions. By also bringing the contextualization of the Society's functioning, we observe its social practices and elements of printed culture.