In the 20s, the modernist literary movement swept the city, through the activities of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Emílio Moura, Pedro Nava, Martins de Almeida and João Alphonsus, poets that published in the Diário de Minas and who met in the bars along Bahia street. It was they who established an intense relation ship with poets and artists from São Paulo through letters and visits. The trips made by Mário de Andrade throughout the state of Minas while discovering again the great importamce of Mineiro Barroque Art, along with motivating modernist publications.

It was this illustre visitor from São Paulo that knew how to express the Noturno de Belo Horizonte (Nighttime in Belo Horizonte), an exaltation-poem revealing the "thousand marvels of the brilliant windows" of the city, flowing before a panel of Brazilian culture (7). They articulated two currents of modern literature in Belo Horizonte: the stream of A Revista, spokesman for the renewal movement of the writers for the Diário de Minas, and the stream of Leite Criolo, a literary magazine criated by João Dornas Filho, Guilhermino César and Aquiles Vivacqua, that provided a vehicle for a radical nationalist model (8).

In the plastic arts, you will observe a recurrent conflict between tradition and modernism, as seen in the Zina Aita exposition, held in 1920 in the Salão do Conselho Deliberativo (Deliberative Counsel Room), which was the first modernist exposition held in the city. In this period, the coming of the European Pedagogical Mission was very important, sponsored by the president of Minas, Antonio Carlos de Andrada, that had as its object the implementing of an educational reform in the State. Highly talented educators came from Europe, such as Helena Antipoff and Jeanne Milde - the first dedicating herself to the education of abandoned children, building a model school, and the second teaching artistic education in the Institute of Education and creating magnificent realistic sculptures in marble and bronze.

The 30s were marked by a great event - the Salão Bar Brazil - considered the first collective exposition of the city's vanguard. The sample city was articulated in 1936 by a group of artists led by Delpino Junior, against the cultural dominence exercised by artist and cultural producer Anibal Mattos, founder of the Minas Society of the Fine Arts. The organization of this collection marked the beginning of the vanguard consciousness of mineiro state artists, which integrated an innovative artistic expression with revolutionary political action, examples of which were the works of Fernando Pierucetti and Delpino Júnior, impregnated with social realism. In this context, the political posters of Monsã stand out, along with the art deco designs of Érico de Paula, the caricatures of Lavalle, the paintings of the impressionist Genesco Murta and the innovative photographs of Francisco Fernandes (9).