The album had a print run of copies. The three pieces in the AMA collection are the woodcuts in this album. In these, Segall presents three different scenes of the interiors of brothels, based on sketches that the artist made in the neighborhood between and The first scene is one that most highlights a very particular characteristic of Mangue: the coexistence of sex workers of Afro-Brazilian and European originβPolish, for the most part.
In the case of the Mangue album, this theme took on a special meaning in his work as it referred to an iconic place within Brazilian identity, particularly for its racial and cultural mix. In this sense, it can be said that this work is a process of reflection by the artist on his status as a Jewish immigrant in Brazil.
Mangue was of interest to other Brazilian artists, such as Di Cavalcanti, who focused more on the festive and euphoric nature of the area. Lasar Segall, born in Vilnius, was a Jewish Lithuanian artist who was naturalized as a Brazilian citizen in He began studying art at an early age in his hometown and later went to Berlin, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts between and From then until , when he moved to Brazil, Segall lived in several European cities where he suffered the struggles of World War I.
He traveled to Brazil for the first time in , where he spent a short time visiting his siblings. In he joined the German expressionist movement and became one of its most prominent figures. He reached artistic maturity while living between Brazil and Europe and simultaneously participated in exhibitions and projects on both sides of the Atlantic. This made Segall a singular figure within the Brazilian modernist movement and in the European avant-garde. His works were included in the Degenerate Art Exhibition organized by the Nazi government in Munich in to condemn European vanguard art.
