20 Essential Works by J. Carlos – Ranked
Twenty works trace the extraordinary career of Brazilian cartoonist J. Carlos, from the pages of Para Todos… and Caretato Art Deco, politics, war and children’s illustration.
José Carlos de Brito e Cunha, known as J. Carlos, created one of the richest bodies of graphic work in twentieth-century Brazil. This selection moves through twenty works from different stages of his career, while the short texts accompanying them gradually trace the life and work of the Rio de Janeiro cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and graphic artist.
Illustration from Minha babá
José Carlos de Brito e Cunha, better known as J. Carlos, was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1884. Cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator, designer and humorist, he spent almost his entire professional life working with newspapers and illustrated magazines.
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Illustration reproduced by Instituto Moreira Salles in its feature on J. Carlos’s work for children.
Instituto Moreira Salles ↗Illustration from Minha babá
J. Carlos entered the press remarkably young. His first published drawing appeared in the weekly Tagarela in 1902, when he was 18 years old.
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Illustration from Minha babá
What followed was almost half a century of continuous work in the Brazilian press. His drawings accompanied major political and social changes in Brazil as well as transformations in the everyday life of Rio de Janeiro.
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Minha babá — title page
Children’s illustration formed a substantial but less frequently remembered side of his career. He worked for O Tico-Tico, one of Brazil’s most important early magazines for young readers.
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Minha babá — cover
Minha babá was the only children’s book for which J. Carlos was both writer and illustrator. The surviving material shows how carefully he treated typography, story openings and illustration as parts of the same page.
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The IMS has published differing year references for the book in its online material, so no publication year is stated here.
Instituto Moreira Salles ↗Drawing for Para Todos…
J. Carlos was never tied to a single publication. His work appeared in magazines and newspapers including Careta, Para Todos…, O Malho, Fon-Fon!, O Tico-Tico and many others.
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Drawing for Para Todos…
Between 1922 and 1931, his role extended beyond individual drawings. J. Carlos worked as an art director for magazines belonging to the O Malho publishing group.
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Drawing for Para Todos…
He worked unusually close to the printing process. Surviving originals contain handwritten instructions about dimensions, colour and reproduction, showing how closely he followed a drawing from the board to the printed page.
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Drawing published in Para Todos…
That relationship with print helps explain why his work cannot be reduced to cartoons alone. J. Carlos also created lettering, decorative initials, vignettes, layouts and other graphic elements for the illustrated press.
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Para Todos… cover
J. Carlos developed an unmistakable graphic language associated with Art Deco. His elegant urban figures, fashions, interiors and city scenes became some of the most recognisable images of his career.
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Scenas da vida carioca
His commercial work formed another part of this broad graphic practice. Scenas da vida carioca was a twelve-page Nestlé booklet written by Marques Rebello and illustrated by J. Carlos in 1936.
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Careta cover
Rio de Janeiro remained one of the great subjects of his work. Streets, fashions, buildings, social habits and everyday characters turned his enormous output into a visual chronicle of the city.
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Careta cover
Politics was another constant. Presidents, elections, censorship and public controversies repeatedly entered his drawings as Brazil moved through several very different political periods.
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Careta cover
His productivity was exceptional. During the years when he worked as Careta’s exclusive artist, he could provide a weekly cover cartoon together with another six drawings for the magazine’s inside pages.
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Drawing for Careta
International events occupied a substantial part of his work. J. Carlos followed the First World War, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War through drawings made for the Brazilian press.
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Careta cover
The Second World War became important enough within his work for the major IMS retrospective to devote an entire section to it. The exhibition also emphasised the anti-Nazi position visible in his wartime drawings.
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Careta cover
J. Carlos was more than a political cartoonist or illustrator. His surviving originals reveal a graphic artist concerned with the entire printed page, from line and lettering to composition and reproduction.
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Véspera de festa
This drawing belongs to the final days of his career. J. Carlos suffered a stroke while working at Careta at the end of September 1950 and died in Rio de Janeiro on 2 October, aged 66.
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IMS identifies the drawing as depicting Getúlio Vargas shortly before the 1950 election and records its publication in Careta on 30 September 1950.
Instituto Moreira Salles ↗Drawing for Careta
The scale of the surviving archive is remarkable. Instituto Moreira Salles preserves around a thousand original drawings as well as bound volumes of magazines, photographs and personal material connected with J. Carlos.
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Graphite, ink, watercolour and gouache on paper. IMS exhibition record.
Instituto Moreira Salles ↗Careta cover
Across politics, war, fashion, childhood and everyday Rio, J. Carlos left an extraordinary visual record of Brazilian public life in the first half of the twentieth century. His work entered the public domain in 2021, allowing a much wider audience to explore a career that stretched across almost five decades of the illustrated press.
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IMS catalogue identification: cover of Careta, 22 April 1939. No separate artwork title has been added here.
J. Carlos collection — Instituto Moreira Salles ↗
