Абдиас ду Насименту: Бразилиялық саяхатшы, ғалым және суретші

Brazilian politician (1914–2011)

Abdias do Nascimento (March 14, 1914 – May 23, 2011) was a prominent African Brazilian scholar, artist, and politician. He served as Rio de Janeiro State Secretary for the Defense and Promotion of Afro Brazilian People and Secretary of Human Rights and Citizenship. While working as curator of the Black Arts Museum project, he began developing his own creative work (painting), and from 1968 on, he exhibited widely in the U. S., Brazil and abroad. He received national and international honors for his work, including UNESCO's special Toussaint Louverture Award for contribution to the fight against racism, granted to him and to poet Aimé Césaire in 2004. He was officially nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Born in Franca, São Paulo state, Nascimento attended public school as a child and joined the military in 1929. In the 1930s Nascimento was a member of the Brazilian Integralist Action, a fascist party. With intense activity in theatrical production, TEN also was responsible for stellar initiatives in black activism, such as the National Convention of Brazilian Blacks (1945–46), the Conference of Brazilian Blacks (1949), and the First Congress of Brazilian Blacks (1950). A resolution of the 1950 congress advocated the need for a Black Arts Museum in Brazil, and the Black Experimental Theater embraced the project. Many artists donated works and the first exhibition was held in 1968 at Rio de Janeiro's Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound). The Black Experimental Theater organized the cast for the play Orfeu da Conceição, by Vinicius de Moraes, which was later adapted into the motion picture Black Orpheus, directed by Marcel Camus.

Nascimento became a leader in Brazil's black movement, and was forced into exile by the military regime in 1968. From 1968 to 1981 Nascimento was very active in the international Pan African Movement and was elected vice president and Coordinator of the Third Congress of Black Culture in the Americas. For the next decade Nascimento was a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, including the Yale School of Drama (1969–1971), and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, where he founded the chair in African Cultures in the New World, Puerto Rican Studies Program in 1971.