The anthropophagic movement (Portuguese: Movimento antropofágico) was a Brazilian artistic manifestation of the 1920s founded and theorized by the poet Oswald de Andrade and the painter Tarsila do Amaral.[1]
Expanding on the ideology of Poesia Pau-Brasil, also written by Oswald, which wanted to create an export poetry, the anthropophagic movement had the objective of "swallowing" (metaphorical nature of the word "anthropophagic") external cultures, such as the American and European, and internal ones, like that of the Amerindians, Afro-descendants, Euro-descendants and Asian-descendants. Overall, foreign culture should not be denied, but it should not be imitated. In his works, Oswald de Andrade ironized the Brazilian elite's submission to developed countries and proposed the "cultural absorption of imported techniques in order to elaborate them autonomously, and convert them into an export product".[1]