Opinion65

After the end of the UNE's CPC, whose building on the Praia do Flamengo was burned on the night of March 31, 1964 — the first night of the civil-military Coup —, its theater-connected artists came together to confront both the regime and unemployment. From this gathering, they founded the collective of actors, authors, and directors called Grupo Opinião. Oduvaldo Viana Filho (Vianinha), Ferreira Gullar, Paulo Pontes, Tereza Aragão, Armando Costa, and others managed to stage some important productions.

The greatest of them, without a doubt, was Opinião, written by the trio Vianinha, Gullar, and Pontes and directed by the then-director of the Teatro de Arena de São Paulo, Augusto Boal. Premiering in December 1964, it was a hit with both audiences and critics. Its perspective on what the “people” were, however, remained tied to the CPC's outlook, that is, the creation and spread of a “popular and revolutionary” art. The play, a musical interspersed with texts about the political situation in Brazil and the Americas (North and South), still followed the lens of socialist realism, in which the “people” would be a virtuous union of peasants, workers, and enlightened bourgeois. In the case of Opinião, these characters were played, respectively, by the musician-actors João do Vale, Zé Ketti, and Nara Leão.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white informational poster. At the top, there is a list of names in two horizontal bands separated by a blank space. The bands contain people's names in alphabetical order. Below these lists is written "OPINIÃO 65" in larger letters. Next, it mentions "MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DO RIO DE JANEIRO" and "EXPOSIÇÃO COMEMORATIVA DO IV CENTENÁRIO". The date "12 de agosto a 12 de setembro de 1965" is at the bottom.

Its success and aesthetic quality caused the name Opinião to spread through the imagination of the era. Besides the show and an album by Nara Leão with the same name, in August 1965 the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro also held its exhibition titled Opinião 65. Featuring seventeen Brazilian artists and thirteen French artists, many of the local names already had solid careers behind them, while others would gain great prominence in the following decades. This is the case of those who came from the clashes within the concrete and neo-concrete group, Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, and Waldemar Cordeiro, or the young Rubens Gerchman, Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara, and Roberto Magalhães. Conceived by the art dealer Jean Boghici and the curator Ceres Franco, it was a moment when young Brazilian painting – with artists living in Rio de Janeiro – showed itself to be a renewing force in Brazilian arts.

Image description: This is a photograph of a festive nighttime scene. On the left, we see people wearing traditional clothing, some holding red decorative objects. In the center, a boy holds a red and white flag. On the right, an adult figure, possibly a man, is dressed in a long tunic and appears to be dancing or taking part in the celebration. The background is blurred, suggesting movement and colorful lights.

The exhibition was a great success with the Rio press, with lengthy articles debating the political and aesthetic character that predominated in the works shown at MAM. Beyond the critical interest, Opinião 65 also became famous at the time for a situation in which art and the city of Rio de Janeiro saw the conflictive meeting of their extremes. It was the first time Oiticica would exhibit his Parangolés in public. For the performance, the artist was accompanied by the passistas and residents of Mangueira. The idea, however, did not go forward, since the museum's management barred the group's members from entering. The banning of the samba dancers and residents of Mangueira from the halls of MAM's Bloco-Escola became a public controversy, since Oiticica went to the press to denounce what he called the institution's racism. It was the meeting of two cities that, at the time, did not meet under any circumstances.