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 , 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

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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

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Giovanni Battista Castagneto Marinha com barco e navio, 1899 oil on wood 8,2 × 10,5 cm

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Daniel Correa Mujica The Moon Keeping Us Awake, 2019 oil on jute 40 × 35 cm

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Adriano Costa Landscape, 2016 mixed media on fabric 24,1 × 24,1 cm

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Alberto da Veiga Guignard Paisagem de Sabará, 1956 oil on wood 40,5 × 46,5 cm

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Tarsila do Amaral Boi na paisagem, 1920s ink on paper 21,5 × 21,5 cm

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Tarsila do Amaral Paisagem com bichos antropofágico, 1930 graphite and colored pencil on paper 10,3 × 16,3 cm

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Tarsila do Amaral Paisagem antropofágica, 1953 graphite on paper 23,2 × 31,7 cm

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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

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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

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Federico Herrero Untitled, 2018 oil and acrylic on canvas 50,2 × 60,3 cm

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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

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Hélio Melo Untitled, 1997 oil and acrylic on canvas 20,6 × 27,2 cm

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José Pancetti Praia do Chega Nego, 1955 oil on canvas 46 × 65,5 cm

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Marina Perez Simão Untitled, 2019 oil on canvas 50 × 40 cm

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Marina Perez Simão Untitled, 2019 oil on canvas 40 × 30 cm

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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

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Henri Nicolas Vinet A Mountain Stream in the Rainforest Above , n.d. oil on canvas 38 × 46,2 cm

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Alfredo Volpi Untitled, 1940s oil on canvas 38,5 × 46,5 cm

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Alfredo Volpi Untitled, 1930s oil on canvas 50 × 73,5 cm

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In 1636, Frans Post sailed to 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 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. At the centre of by this unusual strategic arrangement was the establishment of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy the São Paulo modernist group were painter Tarsila do Amaral (1886 – 1973) and writer Oswald in the country. Although the academy was officially inaugurated in 1826, its origins date back de Andrade (1890 – 1954), who formed an influential couple over the second half of the decade. to 1816, when a group of French architects and artists were brought to the capital city under In 1924, Oswald published his renowned Pau Brazil Poetry manifesto where he claimed the the auspices of the royal court in what is known as the French Artistic Mission. The idea was country’s dual heritage of ‘the school and the jungle’. In the text, Oswald takes a clear stance to establish an art school as part of a concerted effort to build a more erudite society around the against the academicism that dominated all art forms at the time, championing the rejection of court with the introduction of classical values in the largely vernacular culture of the emerging imported artistic and literary forms in favour of a contemporary expression of the world that figurative and before the simplification of forms that would characterise his production from the incorporates both the latest developments of the modern world and Brazil’s ‘native authenticity’. 1950s onwards. Still, his lifelong interest in vernacular elements is already apparent in the latter This was followed by his renowned Anthropophagite Manifesto of 1928 - inspired by Tarsila’s work depicting a pair of humble colonial houses erected by a dirt road that leads to a beach, as work Abaporu (1928) -, in which the indigenous practice of cannibalism is metaphorically is his masterful treatment of colour. Later in his trajectory, the colonial facades would become appropriated as a cultural strategy to create a unique version of modernism in the tropics. recurring motifs in celebrated series that combined the geometric-abstract impulse shared with highbrow Concrete art with references from his ‘man of the people’ background. Over the 1920s, Tarsila produced a singular body of paintings that incorporate a palette inspired by the regional colours favoured by the rural workers of the farm where she grew up; colours The vernacular in South American art takes many forms, having particularly thrived away which she adored as a child only to be constantly reminded by members of her wealthy circle that from the great urban centres. Like Volpi, Hélio Melo (1926 – 2001) was a self-taught artist who they were tasteless and inappropriate. Her enthusiasm for the vernacular led to the exploration produced paintings informed by his work as a rubber-tapper in the northwest state of Acre. of traditional or popular motifs found in Brazilian culture, which until then had been largely Melo’s landscapes present us with a view from within the Amazonian jungle, escaping traditional despised in academic painting as signs of backwardness and underdevelopment. Lacking a sense pictorial representations of the region as either a pristine forest or a demographic void. On the of social critique, Tarsila’s works nonetheless celebrated cultural traits that up to that point had contrary, the Amazon we see here is not only an inhabited territory but also a place of conflict remained invisible – or even despised - in Brazil’s official pictorial tradition. between several social and economic groups of interest. Such elements as the zoomorphic tree placed by a clearing in the midst of the jungle in one of the paintings on show is exemplary of Beyond the dominant modernist agenda promoted by the São Paulo group, there were artists Melo’s treatment of his subject-matter, both in terms of his creation of a personal symbolism and whose dissident practice helped expand the possibilities of modern art in the country. Among in the use of vegetable pigments that give the works a distinctive tonality and light. Dating from these is Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896-1962), a painter who is widely acclaimed for his views the late 1990s, the painting already foregrounds the urgent issue of unsustainable cattle ranching, of sprawling mountains and valleys in the countryside of . Guignard’s imaginary which is currently the largest driver of deforestation in the world’s largest tropical jungle. landscapes are highly subjective and delicate, often depicting the lush green hills immersed in a misty atmosphere in a style that evokes the centuries-long tradition of Chinese landscape In the 21st century, artists continue to be drawn to Southern landscapes. São Paulo artist Lucas painting. Although his profound connection with the land may suggest an alignment with issues Arruda has been obsessively painting seascapes and jungle views from memory for over a decade. of national identity that were so dear to the Brazilian modernists, these paintings seem to stem Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to place his work within the tradition of landscape painting. from the artist’s own psychological connection with his surrounding topography, producing Rather, by fully embracing this worn-out genre Arruda somehow manages to avoid any specific dream-like landscapes that are variously endearing and spectral. narrative content, focusing instead on establishing an experimental dialogue with the history of painting. His carefully crafted seascapes explore hundreds of variations in lighting and multiple The stock market crash in 1929 had a profound effect not only on the country’s economy but brushwork techniques in the treatment of the pictorial surface, often creating images that seem to also contributed to the dissipation of the São Paulo group of modernists, many of whom relied hesitate between abstraction and figuration. His jungles scenes, on the other hand, are decidedly on the income provided by their plantation-owning relatives to support their bohemian lifestyle. figurative. Rendered in detail, the thick tropical vegetation usually occupies the greater part of In the 1930s, a group of proletarian artists including several Italian immigrants started to organise the canvas, acquiring an almost animistic presence. Like Hélio Melo, Arruda seems to provide us regular meetings in a building in downtown São Paulo where some of them had studio spaces. with a view from within the forest. However, his jungle seems at once alive and impenetrable, Alfredo Volpi (1896 – 1988) was a member of the Santa Helena Group who had worked as a attractive and unwelcoming, tropical and bathed by an unsettlingly cold white light. painter and decorator before becoming a professional artist. Landscapes of the South features two early paintings by Volpi from the 1930s and 1940s, when his work was still eminently A similarly desolate feeling is evoked by Patricia Leite’s painting Untitled, from the Praia Series (2015). Through the use of extremely synthetic forms and a muted palette of greyish colours, the work conveys a weird metaphysical mood. Leite’s work often draws on vernacular sources, which are filtered through an erudite repertoire to consciously encompass the complex and multiple references that make up Brazilian art today. With a similarly synthetic approach, Federico Herrero’s almost abstract landscapes are built from vibrant colour blocks, referring to the art historical legacies of muralism and geometric abstraction while reflecting the warmth and colourfulness of nature of his native Costa Rica.

The selection of paintings presented at Landscapes of the South is certainly not intended as a comprehensive survey of the genre in the southern hemisphere. However, by providing a glimpse into particular examples of this pictorial tradition in different historical moments over the past five centuries, it may help elucidate how the representation of landscape in the continent is closely bound to disparate ideologies and beliefs. In other words, landscape is far from being a neutral genre. Bringing together works by academic and self-taught artists, the exhibition also confronts practices that are rarely shown side by side in institutional contexts, but which played equally important roles in the making of the iconography of southern landscapes. It is this complex legacy that inevitably informs the work of contemporary artists looking at landscape in the South American continent today. Rua da Consolação 3368 Mendes 01416 – 000 São Paulo SP Brazil + 55 11 3081 1735 Wood www.mendeswooddm.com @13mendeswooddm Rue des Sablons / Zavelstraat DM 1000 Brussels Belgium + 32 2 502 09 64 www.mendeswooddm.com @60mendeswooddm East 66th Street, 2nd floor Ne 60 wEast Yo rk66 thNY Stre 10et,065 2nd Un flooitedr States Ne+1 w212 Yo 220rk NY 9943 10065 United States +ww1 212w.mendeswooddm. 220 9943 com [email protected] @mendeswooddm