Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Brazilian cultural and artistic production was deeply affected by the military dictatorship. Censorship, repression, exile and persecution led many artists to transform art into a means of resistance, denunciation and critical analysis of social inequalities and authoritarianism.
The proposals of artists associated with the concrete and neoconcrete movements no longer seemed to respond to the urgencies of the political moment. In this context, the New Figuration established itself as an avant-garde movement committed to addressing social questions with a less formal artistic language, one closer to everyday experience. Although similar movements developed in other places, in Brazil it took on specific features that were intimately connected with the local context. One of its central axes was a critique of the military dictatorship, along with the representation of a complex, critically perceived daily life, while many women artists incorporated feminist concerns into their works.
This shift favoured a return to figurative language, including references from mass culture and pop art that are characterised by the repetition of images and signs. Bringing art closer to everyday life, urban references, the press and television made the works more accessible and dismantled hierarchies between high art and popular culture.