Stylogenyin the style of Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)

Avant-garde · 1922–1929 · Latin America & Caribbean

Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)

Also known as Modernismo gráfico, Klaxon typography, Semana de Arte Moderna graphics, Revista de Antropofagia graphics

The print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops. Klaxon (1922-23) kept one cover for all its issues: a heavy grotesque title and fat lowercase words locked around a giant condensed A in a second ink, a thick black bar and the number turned on its side, with only the card and ink changing. Its back covers made sponsors' adverts into word games and mocked the sonnet trade. Books brought title pages set as justified letter blocks, Tarsila do Amaral's flag cover for Pau Brasil, and contour drawings like her Abaporu sketch for the Manifesto Antropófago (1928).

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

Antropofagia's cannibal metaphor and its Tupi words ('Tupy, or not tupy') were a São Paulo elite's figure of speech about Indigenous peoples, not their own voice: borrow the method of swallowing and recombining foreign models, not Tupi people or ritual as decoration. Much of this work is still in copyright in Brazil (life plus 70 years): Guilherme de Almeida (died 1969), Anita Malfatti (1964), Tarsila do Amaral (1973), Di Cavalcanti (1976), John Graz (1980), Paim (1988) and Yan de Almeida Prado (1991); Brecheret (1955) entered the Brazilian public domain on 1 January 2026. A straight green-and-yellow flag pastiche now reads in Brazil as a partisan emblem, so quote Pau Brasil's gesture of rewriting the flag rather than the flag itself.

01

How it works

  • Build the cover in the jobbing shop from what the type cases hold: a heavy grotesque title, fat lowercase words and one giant condensed letter that the words share, so 'mens rio', 'de rte' and 'dern' read as words only through the big A. Then keep the same forme for every issue and change only the colour of the card and of the second ink.
  • Print black plus one ink on tinted card: a red, green, yellow, brown, violet or orange letter and matching numeral on cream, salmon, grey, pink or pale aqua card, with one thick black bar across the cover and the issue number lying on its side.
  • Turn commercial and official formats into jokes and word games. Set a chocolate advertisement as the brand name in four different mixes of type, tumbled at angles inside a frame of the word 'coma' (eat). Print a price list for sonnets and madrigals from a fictitious 'Grande Fabrica Internacional de Sonetos'. List a travel book's chapters as a cinema programme, each line in a different face.
  • Set title pages as one solid justified block of letters and break words wherever the line ends (CANCION / EIRODEO / SWALDDE ...). Run the masthead and running heads in widely spaced lowercase.
  • Draw figures as a single reduced contour or in heavy black planes: Tarsila's huge-footed seated figure beside a cactus and a sun, Brecheret's segmented figure in a circle cut by a line, Paim's angular cinema orchestra beneath a screen.
  • Rewrite a received emblem: put the book's title on the Brazilian flag in place of ORDEM E PROGRESSO, and dress the 'arlequinal' city in the harlequin's lozenges borrowed from a futurist cover.

São Paulo, launched by the Semana de Arte Moderna at the Theatro Municipal (festivals on 13, 15 and 17 February 1922, with an exhibition in the foyer), whose poster and catalogue cover were by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti. Its graphic voice was made in print shops more than studios: Klaxon (15 May 1922 to January 1923), whose cover the poet Guilherme de Almeida composed after visiting the Tipografia Paulista with Couto de Barros, Tácito de Almeida, Graça Aranha and Rubens Borba de Moraes; modernist books such as Paulicea desvairada (Casa Mayença, 1922), Pau Brasil (printed by Au Sans Pareil, Paris, 1925) and Pathé-Baby (1926); and the Revista de Antropofagia (May 1928 to August 1929).

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Blackletter, Gradients, Gloss & highlights, Nostalgic & retro, Authoritative & institutional, Luxurious & glamorous, Photomontage, Collage & layering

Palette

  • #ece4c8
  • #1b1915
  • #c8402a
  • #e08a6c
  • #d8b628
  • #4f6430

Typefaces

  • Heavy jobbing grotesque capitals

    KLAXON across every Klaxon cover, 1922-23; condensed grotesques for the mock 'Aviso á Praça' and price list

  • Fat bracketed-serif, Clarendon-like lowercase

    the staggered 'mens rio / de rte / mo / dern' subtitle, the widely spaced 'k l a x o n' masthead and running foot, and 'coma' around the Lacta advertisement

  • A tall condensed display capital A, which Guilherme de Almeida said came from an Aida opera poster, shared by every word on the Klaxon cover

  • Condensed sans capitals or spaced lowercase set as a justified letter block broken mid-word

    title pages of Pau Brasil, 1925, and Pathé-Baby, 1926

  • Mixed jobbing display faces, scripts and outline letters in pastiche notices

    the 'PROGRAMMA – Sessões corridas' spread of Pathé-Baby, 1926

  • Fantasy and Art Nouveau display faces on Klaxon's back-cover notices

    a fat swash italic for 'Brevemente:' and an Art Nouveau face for 'Natagika ... ou da Natureza e da Arte' on no. 4; 'Tabella Geral' on the no. 7 price list

Known for

  • Klaxon

    mensario de arte moderna, nos. 1 to 8/9 (São Paulo, 15 May 1922 to January 1923), cover by Guilherme de Almeida, who said he went with Couto de Barros, Tácito de Almeida, Graça Aranha and Rubens Borba de Moraes to the Tipografia Paulista for ideas and built the composition around a large 'A' taken from a poster for the opera Aida (1968 interview, as cited by pt.wikipedia). Sérgio Buarque de Holanda later traced the shared letter to Fernand Léger's cover for Cendrars's La Fin du monde filmée par l'Ange N.-D. (Éditions de la Sirène, 1919), where one large N stands out and serves most of the words; the group denied any French model. The same forme on every issue: KLAXON in heavy black grotesque capitals across the top, 'mens rio / de rte / mo / dern' in fat bracketed-serif lowercase staggered around a tall condensed A that completes each word and also forms the A of a tiny SÃO PAULO, then a thick black bar, a small 'No' and a giant issue numeral lying on its side in the colour of the A. The covers viewed show a red A on cream (no. 1), dark green on salmon (2), yellow on pale grey (3), brown on pink (4), dark indigo-violet on beige (5), purple on pale aqua (6), orange on beige (7) and red on grey with '9 8' (8/9). Format 27.5 × 19 cm (Internet Archive copies of the scans; Wikimedia Commons; pt.wikipedia)

  • Guilherme de Almeida, Lacta chocolate advertisement, back cover of Klaxon no. 1 (May 1922), printed in red on cream

    LACTA four times, each in a different mix of capital and lowercase type, tilted, upright and slanting, inside a ruled red frame of the word 'coma' in fat lowercase, set vertically on the two sides (Internet Archive scan; pt.wikipedia notes that the concrete poetry of the 1950s gave it new meaning)

  • Klaxon's mock trade notices for a fictitious 'Grande Fabrica Internacional de Sonetos, Madrigaes, Balladas e Quadrinhas'

    No. 7 has a ruled price list headed 'PANUOSOPHO, PATEROMNIUM & Cia.' in condensed capitals, with a 'Tabella Geral' (sonnets with rich rhymes 1$500, with 'chaves de ouro' 3$000). No. 8/9 has the boxed 'Aviso á Praça' of 'Pantosopho, Pateromnium & Cia.' in condensed grotesque, announcing a 'Laboratorio de analyses chimicos grammaticaes' (Internet Archive scans)

  • 'A obsessão do sabio', back cover of Klaxon no. 2

    (June 1922), an advert for Guaraná Espumante, which advertised in Klaxon with Lacta (no. 4 jokes that both brands turned 'detestáveis' once their adverts stopped): a heavy black drawing in the manner of a woodcut on the issue's salmon card, a bespectacled scholar crossed by diagonal bands lettered in script with drink names (agua mineral, vinho, cerveja, alcool and others struck through) and an unstruck 'guaraná espumante' (Internet Archive scan)

  • Klaxon's 'extra-texto' drawings, one per issue and credited in each table of contents

    Victor Brecheret (no. 1, an elongated, segmented crouching figure in contour line inside a circle cut by a horizontal line), Di Cavalcanti (2, a still life signed DICAVALCANTI), Alberto Cavalcanti (3), Zina Aita (4), Anita Malfatti (5), Yan de Almeida Prado (6), John Graz (7), and Tarsila do Amaral with a Villa-Lobos manuscript score (8/9). Klaxon's emblem appears on the back pages of nos. 5 and 6: a horn built from black vertical bars with a wedge of rays, over KLAXON in small capitals, in a ruled box (Internet Archive scans)

  • Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, cover illustration for the catalogue of the Semana de Arte Moderna exhibition

    (Theatro Municipal, São Paulo, February 1922): a pale standing nude among dense black foliage, signed 'D.C.', above the title, 'catalogo da exposição' and S. PAVLO lettered by hand in rough red-orange capitals, with 1922 in black; the cover was reproduced on a 1972 Brazilian stamp. His poster for the Semana sets SEMANA / DE ARTE / MODERNA in rough hand-drawn black capitals with the first S and last A in red, over a small bare tree with red leaves, signed D.C., and S. PAVLO in black over 1922 in red (pt.wikipedia images; Wikimedia Commons)

  • Mário de Andrade, Paulicea desvairada (São Paulo: Casa Mayença, 1922)

    a cover of flat harlequin lozenges in red, green, yellow, blue, black and cream around a thick black-framed label with the title in italic serif capitals. It echoes the book's 'Arlequinal!... Traje de losangos... Cinza e ouro'. The cover is unsigned; Telê Ancona Lopez attributes it to Guilherme de Almeida and relates its lozenges to the cover of Ardengo Soffici's futurist Arlecchino (1918), a copy of which Mário owned; it was chosen over two figurative proposals, by Di Cavalcanti and by Mário himself, whose sketches are now at the IEB-USP (Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin scan via Wikimedia Commons; Moraes 2015, citing Lopez 1996)

  • Oswald de Andrade, Pau Brasil

    (Paris: printed by Au Sans Pareil, 1925), cover and illustrations by Tarsila do Amaral. The cover is the Brazilian flag (green field, yellow lozenge, dark blue disc) with PAU BRASIL in condensed sans capitals on the band where ORDEM E PROGRESSO should be. The title page sets 'Cancioneiro de Oswald de Andrade prefaciado por Paulo Prado illuminado por Tarsila 1925' as a justified block of condensed capitals broken mid-word (CANCION / EIRODEO / SWALDDE / ANDRADE / PREFACI ...) (Brasiliana scan via Wikimedia Commons; pt.wikipedia)

03

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleBrazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)1922–1929 · Latin America & Caribbean

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. Klaxon: mensario de arte moderna, nos. 1-8/9 (São Paulo, 1922-23), scans at the Internet Archive (files 010055-1_COMPLETO to 010055-8_COMPLETO, the identifiers of the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin copies), https://archive.org/details/010055-1-completo (and -2- to -8-completo); every cover and back cover viewed, with the tables of contents (extra-texto credits: V. Brecheret no. 1, Di Cavalcanti no. 2, Alberto Cavalcanti no. 3, Zina Aita no. 4, Annita Malfatti no. 5, 'Yan' no. 6, John Graz no. 7, 'Tarcila Amaral e Villa-Lobos' no. 8/9), the Lacta advertisement (no. 1), 'A obsessão do sabio' with its unstruck 'guaraná espumante' (no. 2), the book notices in fantasy display faces (no. 4) and the note on Lacta and Guaraná as former advertisers (no. 4, 'NÃO COMAM LACTA NEM BEBAM GUARANA'), the 'Panuosopho, Pateromnium & Cia.' price list (no. 7) and the 'Aviso á Praça' of 'Pantosopho, Pateromnium & Cia.' (no. 8/9)
  2. Wikimedia Commons, 'Klaxon n. 3.jpg', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klaxon_n._3.jpg (cover of no. 3, yellow A on pale card)
  3. Wikipedia, 'Klaxon' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaxon (15 May 1922 to January 1923; no director; cover by Guilherme de Almeida, composed after a visit to the Tipografia Paulista with Couto (Antônio Carlos Couto de Barros), Tácito (de Almeida), (Graça) Aranha and Rubens (Borba de Moraes) 'para recolher ideias', around a large 'A' from an Aida opera poster, after his 1968 interview in O Estado de S. Paulo; Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's claim of a debt to Léger's cover for Cendrars's 'La Fin du Monde Filmée par L'Ange Notre Dame', where the letter N serves most of the words, contested by the members; format 27.5 × 19 cm with a 25 × 18 cm type area; card and A colour changing per issue; Almeida's Lacta advertisement on the back of no. 1; the mock advertisements against Parnassianism; extra-texto drawings by Malfatti, Brecheret, Di Cavalcanti and Graz) and 'Klaxon (magazine)' (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaxon_(magazine) (nine issues; 2013 facsimile by Cosac Naify and ICCo)
  4. Wikipedia, 'Semana de Arte Moderna' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semana_de_Arte_Moderna (13 to 17 February 1922 at the Theatro Municipal, exhibition in the foyer, festivals on the 13th, 15th and 17th; poster by Di Cavalcanti, image 'Semana-de-22-.jpeg'; catalogue cover illustration by Di Cavalcanti, image 'Semana de Arte Moderna.jpg'; both hand-lettered, viewed; list of exhibiting artists)
  5. Wikimedia Commons, 'Stamp of Brazil - 1972 - Colnect 187538 - Poster for Modern Art Week.jpeg', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stamp_of_Brazil_-_1972_-_Colnect_187538_-_Poster_for_Modern_Art_Week.jpeg ('Reproduction of the cover of the catalogue of the 1st Modern Art Exhibition in Brazil in 1922, designed by Di Cavalcanti')
  6. Wikipedia, 'Revista de Antropofagia' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revista_de_Antropofagia (May 1928 to August 1929; first dentição of ten issues, May 1928 to February 1929, directed by Alcântara Machado and Raul Bopp; second dentição of fifteen issues in the Diário de São Paulo, 17 March to 1 August 1929, led by Geraldo Ferraz; the manifesto in no. 1)
  7. Wikimedia Commons, 'Manifesto Antropófago.jpg', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manifesto_Antrop%C3%B3fago.jpg (photograph of p. 3 of Revista de Antropofagia no. 1, 1928, with Tarsila do Amaral's contour drawing; caption on the page 'Desenho de Tarsila 1928 – De um quadro que figurará na sua proxima exposição de Junho na galeria Percier, em Paris')
  8. Wikimedia Commons, 'Pau Brasil (Andrade, 1925).pdf', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pau_Brasil_(Andrade,_1925).pdf (scan of the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin copy, https://digital.bbm.usp.br/handle/bbm/7829; flag cover, justified letter-block title page, 'Impresso pelo Sans Pareil de Paris, 37, avenue Kléber'; Tarsila's illustrations are masked in the scan) and Wikipedia, 'Pau-Brasil (livro)' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau-Brasil_(livro) (Au Sans Pareil; Tarsila do Amaral 'projetou a capa e as ilustrações do livro')
  9. Wikimedia Commons, 'Alcântara Machado - Pathé-Baby (1926).pdf', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alc%C3%A2ntara_Machado_-_Path%C3%A9-Baby_(1926).pdf (HathiTrust/Google scan; cover, title page 'estampas de paim ... são paulo 1926', PROGRAMMA spread and chapter openers viewed) and Wikipedia, 'Antônio Paim Vieira' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B4nio_Paim_Vieira (1895-1988; took part in the Semana; cover of Pathé-Baby 'onde Paim executa uma das mais curiosas e originais composições gráficas da época (uma provável influência de suas experiências na xilogravura)', in tune with the 'curta e seca' sentences, 'segundo Sérgio Milliet'; the paragraph's one reference, Aracy Amaral, Artes Plásticas na Semana de 22 (1970), p. 189, is attached to the sentence on Paim as an early woodcut artist)
  10. Wikimedia Commons, 'Capa - Paulicea Desvairada (1922).jpg' and 'Paulicea desvairada (1922).pdf', https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capa_-_Paulicea_Desvairada_(1922).jpg (Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin, https://digital.bbm.usp.br/handle/bbm/7651; harlequin cover; text of 'Inspiração': 'Arlequinal!... Traje de losangos... Cinza e ouro') and Wikipedia, 'Pauliceia Desvairada' (pt), https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauliceia_Desvairada (São Paulo: Casa Mayença, 1922)
  11. Marcos Antonio de Moraes, 'Pauliceia desvairada nas malhas da memória', O eixo e a roda 24:2 (2015), pp. 173-193, https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/o_eixo_ea_roda/article/view/28294 (the harlequin cover, unsigned, attributed to Guilherme de Almeida after Telê Ancona Lopez, Mariodeandradiando, 1996, p. 23; its lozenges in dialogue with the cover of Soffici's Arlecchino, 1918, in Mário's library; chosen over figurative proposals by Di Cavalcanti and by Mário, now at the IEB-USP)
  12. Fine-book listing, Sims Reed, 'La Fin du Monde Filmée par l'Ange N.-D.', https://books.simsreed.com/books/45661 (Blaise Cendrars, compositions and cover by Fernand Léger, Paris: Éditions de la Sirène, 1919)
  13. Wikipedia (pt), 'Yan de Almeida Prado', https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_de_Almeida_Prado (1898-1991; drawings for Klaxon) and 'John Graz', https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graz (1891-1980; work published in Klaxon no. 7); 'Guilherme de Almeida' (1890-1969; made the Klaxon cover and the Lacta adverts), 'Anita Malfatti' (1889-1964), 'Tarsila do Amaral' (1886-1973), 'Di Cavalcanti' (1897-1976), 'Victor Brecheret' (1894-1955); Lei 9.610/1998, art. 41, https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l9610.htm (economic rights last 70 years from 1 January after the author's death)
  14. Daniel Rangel et al., Klaxon em revista (São Paulo: Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea / Cosac Naify, 2013) (book; cited by pt.wikipedia, not consulted directly for this entry)

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