Sculpture and indianism(s) in 19th century Brazil Alberto Martín Chillón [1] CHILLÓN, Alberto Martín. Sculpture and indianism(s) in 19th century Brazil. 19&20 , Rio de Janeiro, v. X, n. 1, jan./jun. 2015. Available at: <http://www.dezenovevinte.net/uah1/amc_en.htm>. [Português ] * * * Introduction Which peoples were those that the Portuguese encountered in the land of the Holy Cross, when they took the opportunity and extended Cabral’s discovery?[2] 1. Friedrich von Martius asked himself the same question in 1845 when deciding how to write the History of Brazil, at a turning point for constructing the new nation, and the question remained in the collective conscience as a problem to be solved during the whole period of the Empire; it was not just about knowing which peoples they were, but also, on a factual level, what their role was in the new state and, on a symbolic level, how they were going to be represented and for what purpose. That is in fact the same question: what should be done with those people encountered by the Portuguese in the land of the Holy Cross, in a society that was completely foreign to their own and what kind of relationship should be established with them? In other words, the paramount question within this context is to know how indigenous people would fit into a western society transplanted to the tropics, not only physically, but also imagetically. The indigenous individual and his image will become a problem, a challenge to be solved, and not always will these two elements be connected. 2. We seek the goal of understanding how fine arts face the difficult task of representing the Other, the indigenous individual; what languages are selected; what characteristics are emphasized; what their main concerns and choices are. It is all about choices, after all, maybe more than inability or lack of knowledge, and believing so allows us to look for a stronger intentionality in artworks, disregarding restrictive labels such as "academicism". We will follow this trend, in opposition to authors like Bardi, who stated that artists: 3. were ignorant of ethnography, had no contact with the indians, were not credulous readers of “A Confederação dos Tamoios” (The Tamoios Confederation), by Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães, expressed their Indigenist speculations in a decadent mannerism [...]. The authentic Indianist painting is that which was executed by the illustrators of the exploration groups, since they observed the indigenous people with curiosity and scientific interest.[3] 4. We will not herein consider the greater proximity to an indigenous “reality” as a