When I heard the auctioneer say the word “African,” I instinctively looked up. He was holding a large and heavy book in his hand, unsteadily, as he flipped to a front page.
From where I sat a little distance away, I saw a garment in bright yellow on a dark body. The image was laid out on a white background with no other distractions. It was awesome, and I decided to bid on the book – actually two of them – without having previewed it before the sale.
The auctioneer was talking them up, hoping to get as much money for them as he could for the consignor. One other person was as impressed as me and we engaged in tit-for-tat bids. Finally, that auction-goer gave up and I got the books.
The title was in Portuguese, and when I opened one of the books, I saw that the text was also in the language, which I do not speak. The paintings, though, spoke a language that I could understand. Page after page of men and women in beautiful and colorful costumes, and drums and other instruments.
The title bore the word “Africanos,” hinting that the book was connected to the continent in some way. The full title was “Iconografia dos Deuses Africanos no Candomble da Bahia” (translated to “Iconography of the African Gods in the Candomble of Bahia,” I learned later). The watercolors were created by a Brazilian artist named Carybe.
The son of an Italian father and Brazilian mother, Carybe was born in Argentina in 1911 and spent several years in Italy before the family moved to Brazil in 1919. His birth name was Hector Julio Paride Bernabo, and his scout companions in Brazil gave him the nickname Carybe, from a genus of freshwater fish (spelled caribe) that includes the piranha. Scouts were apparently nicknamed after fish.
Carybe was an eclectic figure, excelling as a painter, engraver, illustrator, sculptor, muralist and journalist. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and won a scholarship to study in New York in 1958. He went to Bahia in 1938 as a newspaper correspondent, loved the people and its culture, and became a permanent resident in 1950 and some years later, a naturalized Brazilian.
He absorbed the Bahians’ practice of the African-Brazilian religion Candomble and its deities. Carybe and Pierre Verger, a French photographer who settled in Bahia, “produced beautifully appealing images of Candomblé ceremonies, often drawing specific visual comparisons to Yoruba practices from West Africa, thereby codifying an image of Candomblé as a religion closely tied to West African traditions,” according to Heather Shirey, an art professor at the University of Saint Thomas.
Carybe illustrated Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s wonderful book “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” as well as books by Jorge Amado, a native-born Bahian whose works played up the country’s African heritage.
In 1958, Carybe won a competition to paint murals for the new American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The murals were hung in 1960, but were about to be destroyed about five years ago when the terminal was to be demolished. The airlines donated them to Miami-Dade County, and the Brazilian company Odebrecht had them removed and restored.
The two murals – titled ‘Rejoicing and Festival of the Americas’ and ‘Discovery and Settlement of the West’ – now hang in Miami International Airport, installed with much fanfare. One of Carybe’s other important murals is the “Grande Mural dos Orixás,” 19 panels showing the Candomble gods. The panels are are in private hands.
The books at auction were two of the same and not two separate volumes, as I had assumed. The owner apparently cherished them because they were in good condition. The front and back covers are tied together along the open side with white Petersham ribbons. Untying them is like opening a gift, which these books certainly are.
The book was published in 1980, and contains 128 reproductions of Candomble ceremonies, costumes and dress, rituals, deities and instruments. The paintings cover Carybe’s works from 1940 to 1980, and the book was authored by Carybe, Amado, Verger and Waldeloir Rego, a Brazilian historian who also studied Candomble.
My two books appear to be first editions published by Raizes in 1980. Apparently, only 5,000 copies were originally printed, but there have been reprints.
Carybe died in Bahia in 1997, leaving behind a wonderful legacy. The next time I’m in the Miami airport, I’ll be sure to look up his murals.
[…] by Carybé, an Argentinian artist (but, a Brazilian national treasure) who settled in Bahia in the late 1930s. The artist has been largely credited for helping shift the […]
Wonderful article. I found this when trying to find examples of Carybé’s work.
Your book may very well have been in Spanish, but Portuguese and Spanish look very similar. The title looks like Portuguese to me. I believe the word “dos” ( a contraction of “de os”) in the title is Portuguese. I think it would be “de los” in Spanish.
One way to tell the difference when you look at more of the text is that “the” in Spanish is lo, la, los, or las. In Portuguese it would be o, a, os, or as. Some words in Portuguese will end with ão (as in the city São Paulo). Many words are exactly the same in both languages, but many are not. Although I can’t speak Spanish, I can read a lot of Spanish and some Italian because of my knowledge of Portuguese which I had to learn to survive living in Brazil for several years..
What is interesting about most African religious traditions in Brazil, is that they have been intertwined with Roman Catholicism and indigenous beliefs. Slaves were forced to become Christians, so they gave their gods the names of Christian saints who had similar characteristics. For example, Yemanja, the goddess of the sea, is seen as a mother figure and is tied to the Virgin Mary. Obaluaé, a deity of medicine, healing and transformation & is associated with the healing of smallpox, was paired with Saint Roch, saint of contagious diseases.
A Brazilian movie, O Pagador de Promessas (The Promise Payer), which won at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962 portrays a poor man from the countryside who carries a cross many miles to a church to thank St Barbara for saving his donkey, which he needs to make a living. At first, the priest accepts him with open arms. But when he learns that the man prayed to orixas (minor African gods) before he prayed to St. Barbara, he refuses to accept the cross.
This continues to be a problem in Brazil. Some priests totally reject African pagan beliefs. Others have chosen to accept those who have mixed the religions together. (The motives of the latter may be to save souls or to have more parishioners to donate to the church.)
I’m not an expert on the African religious traditions in Brazil, but I lived in the state north of Bahia and visited the Bahian city of Salvador frequently. I’ve been interested in anything Brazilian since then, so I read about such things from time to time.
I had studied art in college. When I lived in Brazil, I purchased a book about the orishas (“orixas” in Portuguese) filled with Carybé’s brush & ink drawings. Carybé was able to make the most remarkable drawings with just a few sweeps of his brush. The last time I was in Brazil, I saw a lot of his original works at the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Salvador, Bahia. There were about 50 paintings similar to those in your article above along with many of his cedar panels carved in bas relief.
Thanks for pointing that out. I checked and found that the books are in Portuguese, and I’ve made the change in the blog post.