Landscapes of the South New York 30/01 2020 – 15/02 2020 Lucas
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Landscapes of the South New York 30/01 2020 – 15/02 2020 Lucas Arruda, Miguel Bakun, Giovanni Battista Castagneto, Daniel Correa Mejía, Adriano Costa, Alberto da Veiga Guignard, Tarsila do Amaral, Nicolau Antonio Facchinetti, Friedrich Hagedorn, Federico Herrero, Patricia Leite, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Hélio Melo, José Pancetti, Marina Perez Simão, Frans Post, Henri Nicolas Vinet, Alfredo Volpi Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Landscapes of the South, a group exhibition themed around the representation of landscapes in South America. Comprised of works made between 1659 and 2019, the works on view were made by early European colonizers in Brazil, modernist Brazilian masters who sought to subvert the vision of said colonizers by building a national artistic language, and contemporary South American artists who reflect on the notion of landscape itself, beyond its political referents. The exhibition features works by Frans Post (Netherlands, 1612-1680), Friedrich Hagedorn (Poland, 1814-1889), Henri Nicolas Vinet (France, 1817-1876), Nicolau Antonio Facchinetti (Italy, 1824-1900), Giovanni Battista Castagneto (Italy, 1851-1900), Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil, 1886-1973), Alberto da Veiga Guignard (Brazil, 1896-1962), Alfredo Volpi (Italy, 1896-1988), Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (Brazil, 1900-1995), José Pancetti (Brazil, 1902-1958), Miguel Bakun (Brazil, 1909-1963), and Hélio Melo (Brazil, 1926-2001). In addition, the exhibition includes works by the contemporary Latin American artists Patricia Leite (Brazil, 1955), Federico Herrero (Costa Rica, 1978), Daniel Correa Mejía (Colombia, 1986), Adriano Costa (Brazil, 1975), Marina Perez Simão (Brazil, 1981), and Lucas Arruda (Brazil, 1983). The older among these artists guided the emergence of a national artistic practice, some of them teaching at recently established Brazilian academies. The work of the European painters who traveled to Brazil is a reminder that to paint is also to colonize. Prior to the mid 20th century, beyond its coastal cities, Brazil was still mostly uncolonized and inhabited by indigenous and runaway enslaved peoples. Painting was a way of domesticating the continent’s frontier. Their work, placed against that of contemporary artists, invites reflections on the ways in which we relate to landscapes today, both geopolitically and psychologically. Environmental and territorial concerns shape how we perceive and manage our environment; art translates these questions into the aesthetic realm. Although the works exhibited exist within their own very unique habits and palettes, we are gifted a glimpse into the palpable connections and conversations of a shared and ever-shifting South American landscape. Lucas Arruda Untitled (from Deserto- Modelo series), 2019 oil on canvas 20 × 20 cm MW.LCA.619 Miguel Bakun Untitled, 1950s oil on canvas 46 × 54 cm MW.MBK.001 Miguel Bakun Paisagem, 1950s oil on canvas 35 × 46 cm MW.MBK.002 Giovanni Battista Castagneto Marinha com pedras, n.d. oil on wood 8 × 10,6 cm MW.GBC.002 Giovanni Battista Castagneto Marinha com barco e navio, 1899 oil on wood 8,2 × 10,5 cm MW.GBC.003 Daniel Correa Mujica The Moon Keeping Us Awake, 2019 oil on jute 40 × 35 cm MW.DCO.001 Adriano Costa Landscape, 2016 mixed media on fabric 24,1 × 24,1 cm MW.ACT.B.453 Alberto da Veiga Guignard Paisagem de Sabará, 1956 oil on wood 40,5 × 46,5 cm MW.ADV.001 Tarsila do Amaral Boi na paisagem, 1920s ink on paper 21,5 × 21,5 cm MW.TDA.005 Tarsila do Amaral Paisagem com bichos antropofágico, 1930 graphite and colored pencil on paper 10,3 × 16,3 cm MW.TDA.006 Tarsila do Amaral Paisagem antropofágica, 1953 graphite on paper 23,2 × 31,7 cm MW.TDA.007 Tarsila do Amaral Cena de colônia na fazenda (verso: Pé de café com colono carpindo), 1931 graphite, water, and gouache on paper 21 × 18 cm MW.TDA.008 Nicolau Antonio Facchinetti Paqueta Cove, 1887 oil on wood 21,5 × 45 cm MW.NAF.001 Friedrich Hagedorn Untitled, n.d. oil on canvas 42 × 209 cm MW.FHA.001 Federico Herrero Untitled, 2018 oil and acrylic on canvas 50,2 × 60,3 cm MW.FHE.001 Patricia Leite Untitled, from Praias series, 2015 oil on wood 23 × 55 cm MW.PLT.207 Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato Lagoa Santa, 1971 oil on eucatex 60 × 46 cm MW.ALL.102 Hélio Melo Untitled, 1997 leaf extract on cardboard 21,4 × 28,2 cm MW.HME.001 Hélio Melo Untitled, 1997 oil and acrylic on canvas 20,6 × 27,2 cm MW.FHE.002 José Pancetti Praia do Chega Nego, 1955 oil on canvas 46 × 65,5 cm MW.JPA.001 Marina Perez Simão Untitled, 2019 oil on canvas 50 × 40 cm MW.MPS.348 Marina Perez Simão Untitled, 2019 oil on canvas 40 × 30 cm MW.MPS.347 Frans Post Franciscan Convent of Igaraçu, 1659 oil on wood 50 × 41 cm MW.FPO.002 Henri Nicolas Vinet Untitled, n.d. oil on wood 41 × 52 cm MW.HNV.001 Henri Nicolas Vinet A Mountain Stream in the Rainforest Above Rio de Janeiro, n.d. oil on canvas 38 × 46,2 cm MW.HNV.002 Alfredo Volpi Untitled, 1940s oil on canvas 38,5 × 46,5 cm MW.AVO.002 Alfredo Volpi Untitled, 1930s oil on canvas 50 × 73,5 cm MW.AVO.001 In 1636, Frans Post sailed to Recife with Dutch governor Johan Maurits and his entourage. Brazilian Empire. Between 1630 and 1654, the Dutch Republic maintained a colony in northeast Brazil, having After the country’s independence in 1922, art was one of the tools used by official discourses to captured the captaincy of Pernambuco from the Portuguese Empire. Post was one of the first construct the idea of a unified nation. It was now necessary to build a pictorial repertoire capable European artists to depict the American landscape in loco, and is largely considered to be the first of legitimising the new regime, and painting played an important role in providing imagery that landscape painter of the New World tropics. Through the observation of the Brazilian nature supported the mental construction of the republican identity. Over the 19th century, neoclassic and built environment, Post documented the conquered land in extraordinary detail, creating and romantic styles imported from Europe prevailed in Brazil. The paintings from the period images that would attest to the tropical beauty of the economically promising new possession. featured in this exhibition exemplify the shift to a more subjective approach to landscape in Commissioned by the court, these paintings attempted to convey the image of colonial control the works of European artists who established themselves in the country. The departure from over the territory at the same time as showing the colony’s exotic and unforgiving terrain. the classicism promoted by the Academy is observed in the works of Italian Nicola Antonio Fachinetti (1824-1900), German Friedrich Hagedorn (1814-1889), and Frenvh Henri Nicholas Post also made numerous sketches, which provided a source for the imagery used in the work Vinet (1817-1876), which already betray a taste for the picturesque. produced after his return to Holland, in 1644. While the paintings executed during his eight- year sojourn in Brazil were specifically made under Maurits’ patronage, once back home he was Among some notable artists working toward the end of the century is Giovanni Batttista Castagneto producing work for the market. Perhaps because he was freed from the royal agenda of patriotism (1851 -1900). Born in Genoa, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1874, and legend goes that his father and conquest - or maybe simply because his memory of Brazil was slowly fading away -, his forged his documents in order to enrol him at the Fine Arts Academy: at 23 he was considered faithful representations of observed scenes started to gradually incorporate elements of imagined too old to be a student. He later studied under German painter Georg Grimm, a rebel who had exoticism that highlight the exuberance and otherness of tropical nature for an European abandoned the academy and taught his students en plein air. Castagneto’s almost monochromatic, audience. Franciscan Convent of Igaraçu (1659) is the earlier work on display at Landscapes of gestural seascapes bathed in blinding light represent an important departure from academic styles, the South, a group exhibition focusing on the iconography of landscape in the South American highlighting the psychological aspect of landscape in detriment of accurate representation. His continent from the 17th century to the present. As such, it provides a remarkable example of gestural surfaces are almost violent and the artist makes extensive use of impasto techniques that earlier colonial attempts to visually represent the distant southern landscapes, with the convent foreground the materiality of the work. In Castagneto, landscape no longer expresses the virtues at the centre of the composition serving as evidence of the establishment of European values in of a conquered land; neither does it serve to support the ideology of national unity. Rather, the ‘uncivilized’ continent. they seem to express a radical correspondence between the ever-shifting patterns of the subject’s interior life and of the exterior landscape, leading to significant formal innovations that helped In Brazil, the beginning of the 19th century was marked by the arrival of the Portuguese royal open the path to the rise of modernism in the following century. family to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Fleeing from the Napoleonic invasion of Lisbon, Prince Regent John decided to transfer the Portuguese court to the colony, and for thirteen years Rio de Janeiro By the 1920s, several Brazilian artists had embraced the idea of forging an avant-garde that functioned as the capital of the Portuguese empire. Among the many developments promoted combined native or regional references with elements of European modernism.