Skip to main content

Kayapò, Il popolo che venne dall'acqua

Renato Trevisan - Emilio Iurman

The volume contains the catalog published on the occasion of the exhibition on the Kayapò people in the year 2002. The book presents the "Kayapò", a people who live in Northern Brazil, and their works of art, covering the everyday life, with its beauty and refinement, the cycles of life, and their sense of belonging and survival.

This people, who lives in the forest and is subject to continuous movements, has been able to transform their own experience into art. The artifacts, the tools, the colors and the design of the body painting, the descriptions of ceremonies and the myths of the objects on display at the museum, illustrated in the book, are charming illustrations of their lifestyle.

Beautiful is the world, beautiful the moon and the stars,
beautiful are forest, animals, spirits that move in the thick of green.
Beautiful is the sowing and beautiful is the harvest,
beautiful are turtles and beetles,
beautiful are flowers and butterflies.
Beautiful is the great predator, and the parrots with colored feathers.
Beautiful is the river that quenches the forest by day and by night,
its shores are beautiful.
Beautiful is the fish
and beautiful is the feast for fishing.
It is beautiful and pleasant to live this way on earth.

The author of the collection and ethnographic notes is Father Renato Trevisan who has lived with the Kayapò people for over 25 years. Living with them, together with other missionaries, he tried to help this people to defend its cultural identity and its territory, awakening a critical conscience before the great challenges this people have to make: to leave their villages, to confront the challenges of modernization, without getting losing their identity.


Edition CSAM, Brescia, 2002
Un popolo dell’Amazzonia: la sua arte, la sua cultura.
Pages 120, with photographs of original artifacts. Price: € 12.
FaLang translation system by Faboba