Among the collaborators and teachers at UFBA was
a string of artists and international thinkers committed
to avant-garde ideas and experimentation. Principal
among them were the Italian architect and designer
Lina Bo Bardi (director of Bahia’s Museum of Modern
Art, but working in tandem with the university), theater director Martim Gonçalves, Swiss musician and visual
artist Walter Smetak, the famous German maestro
Hans J. Koellreuter, Portuguese historian Agostinho
da Silva and the Polish contemporary dance teacher,
Yanka Rudzka. In addition to these professionals, and amateurs such as the journalist João Ubaldo Ribeiro,
the young Glauber Rocha, Caetano Veloso, Maria
Bethânia, Gilberto Gil, Waly Salomão and Tom Zé,
the anthropologist Vivaldo da Costa Lima, philosopher
Carlos NelsonCoutinho and many others were active
frequenters of the university’s daily life.

Their subsequent work positions them as representatives
of a Bahian intellectual milieu, whose activities spread
from the UFBA and the Bohemian and cultural circles
of Salvador to the greater world outside.  Spaces such
as Bahia’s Museum of Modern Art worked in continuous partnership with their students, through the figure
of Lina Bo Bardi. Intellectuals writing for newspapers,
such as the Diário de Notícias, published articles
in magazines like Mapa and Ângulos or took part
in the film clubs of critics such as Walter Silveira
and became frequenters of the university environment, taking part in classes and seminars.

Lastly, artists already conversant with the African
traditions of Bahian culture – among them the painter Carybé, sculptor Mario Cravo Junior and the
photographer/ethnologist Pierre Verger – found new
spaces for reflection and debate in initiatives following
the example of the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais
(CEAO) (Center for Afro-Oriental Studies), directed
by Agostinho da Silva.

This climate of collective action, with meetings in the city’s
bookshops, theaters and cinemas, helped in the formation
of what Brazilian cultural commentators would later call
the “Bahian group”. Antonio Risério, another intellectual
of the period, called it the “Avant-Garde in Bahia”.