The return to Brazil in 1966 marked the beginning of Rubem Valentim’s sculptural practice. After his time in Rome, the artist consolidated his language by incorporating three-dimensional pieces into his work: the emblem reliefs and the emblematic objects.
In the next year he moved to Brasilia, following an invitation to teach at the Instituto Central de Artes at Brasilia University. Discouraged by the bureaucratic demands of the position, he abandoned the teaching job after one year, but remained in the capital.
For the first time in years, Valentim broke away from symmetry and proposed asymmetrical compositions: the central axis disappeared and as a consequence, the form moved frontally and transversally and space became ambiguous, with a constant alternation of grounds that moved closer or further away.
The years in Brasilia resulted in a process of synthesis of his work, which culminated in the creation of the Kitonic Alphabet, a set of 15 symbols that can be combined among themselves to create new symbols. Valentim referred to them as “poetic logos of Afro-Brazilian culture”.
In 1976 Valentim wrote Manifesto, Albeit Late, a text in which he theorised his own work, which he called “Brazilian tracing”, and identified it as an “authentic Brazilian art language”. In his text Valentim wrote about art as a “poetic weapon against violence” and also “an exercise of freedom against repressive forces”.
His insistence on the spatial dimension set apart his participation in the 14th São Paulo Biennial, where he presented the Oxalá Temple installation from 1977.