My study examines the art and experience of Lithuanian-born, German-educated, Jewish painter Lasar Segall (1891-1957) in Brazil between the time of his immigration in 1924 and the end of WWII. It maps responses to Segall's representations of Brazilian society during the gradual tnµ1sition from the nationalist zeal of the 1920s to the authoriatarianism that characterized the Vargas era as a means to examine racial ideologies emanating from Europe and Brazil and the manifestations of these discourses in the visual arts. Attitudes toward Segall, whose depictions of Brazil were divided between representations of urban Afro-Brazilians, traditional Jewish life and customs and the plight of European immigrants, varied radically during this period. In contextualizing Segall's production and its critical reception (positive and negative), I focus on the often contradictory relation of rhetoric, policy and social reality regarding racial and ethnic difference with the onset of WWII.