GRAPHIC HUMOR IN BRAZIL
First Images

XXI Century technology allows that a fact that occurred in one day be the theme of a Graphic Humor work on the next one.

But on the first half of the XIX Century, when woodcuts were the only means of reproduction possible in Brazil for the satirical press, an illustration published five months after a fact is equivalent to what would be today a publication that presented the main news of the week.

Considered the technological parameters of that epoch, the illustration published in pernambuco, on the independent newspaper  O Carcundão (The Hunchback), on May 16, 1831, may be understood as a critic to the members of the Partido Restaurador (Restaurateur Party), nicknamed “hunchbacks” by the liberals and who, throughout the Throne Columns Society, intended to give back the crown to D. Pedro I, who had abdicated five months before.

After that firt artwork we find in 1832 the anonymous illustration at the newspaper O carapuceiro (The Hat Maker), also in Pernambuco and with a critic and political point of view similar to its antecessor.

In 1837, in an anonymous lithography attributed to Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre, Justiniano José da Rocha is the first recognizable public figure to be caricatured.

From 1844 and on, with the Lanterna Mágica (Magic Lantern), published by Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro starts to concentrate the Brazilian satirical press. But the province of São Paulo with the Diabo Coxo (Lame Devil) and the Cabrião and the province of Pernambuco with the Diabo A Quatro (Devil at Four) and the América Illustrada (Illustrated America) also use humor to interpret reality.

With the Semana Illustrada (Illustrated Week) by the German author Henrique Fleuss and the Revista Illustrada (Illustrated Review) by the Italian Angelo Agostini, Graphic humor becomes part of the Brazilian press.

In this exhibit we can see some of the first images that mark the birth of this form of art and journalism in Brazil.