Brett and those involved with Signals Gallery were interested in continental developments such as the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) and in particular artists such as FranÁois Morellet. GRAV had been a participant in a series of Biennials organised by Nouvelle Tendance. The latter was the product of the collaboration between Matko Mestrovic, Bozo Bek, and the Brazilian Almir Mavignier. Mavignier had taken part in the emergence of abstraction in Rio together with M?rio Pedrosa, Ivan Serpa and Abraham Palatnik.


To raise the similarities of two obviously separate responses to the socio-cultural transitions between the 1950s and 60s, serves the purpose of emphasising that Brazilian ‘Constructivism’ was not a provincial example of artists responding to long-gone events in Europe, but on the contrary, that they were independently engaged in issues which were at the core of avant-garde movements around the world. One could conclude therefore that the emergence of North American Pop Art, overshadowed the fact that the British and Brazilian versions of Pop Art shared a constructivist inheritance. By attempting to claim precedence over the dominant North American model, the Independent Group essentially undermined the complexity and richness of their production during the 1950s. The opposite occurred in Brazil were historical analysis has valued the constructivist inheritance often at the expense of the diversity of movements that followed.