The painting reproduced on the cover of this volume is entitled EFCB (Estação de Ferro Central do Brasil [Brazil Central Station]). It was painted in 1924 by Tarsila do Amaral, then a member of an avant-garde group of artists and writers based in the main in São Paulo, who were looking to renovate national culture. Nationalism was not defined in narrow, autarchic, terms. One of the main promoters and interlocutors of the group was the Swiss-French poet Blaise Cendrars, who, alongside Apollinaire, had 'founded' cubist poetry in 1913. Cendrars had been invited to Brazil in 1924 by the cultural maecenas Paulo Prado, an important promoter of modern art, and he was amazed at the newly extended, vibrant city of São Paulo, whose modern buildings and cosmopolitan culture reflected the wealth of the coffee-producing elite. He wrote a number of 'snapshot' poems about the city, celebrating its scope and achievements - including the railway system and the train station that had been built as a replica of Paddington Station in London. Tarsila's painting is, in this context, a homage both to Cendrars and to Brazilian modernity.