Tropics to Talk About: Witkacy and Oswald de Andrade

Abstract

This paper concentrates on Witkacy’s Pure Form and the concept of Anthropophagy that was coined by Oswald de Andrade, and their affi nity with the notions of utopia and tropicality. Tropicality is detected in the form of the imaginary construction of Witkacy regarding the South Sea Islands on the one hand, and on the other in the utopic island of Vera Cruz, reinvented by Oswald de Andrade in his mature years. The seamen of the old world fi rst conceptualised Vera Cruz in this way in legends that alluded to the lost paradise and following this trace Oswald dreamt it could be a future paradise. Both Witkacy and de Andrade, beyond being artists, were thinkers of their specifi c cultures and had their theories regarding the future of mankind.