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1a Edição São Paulo, 2019 Tarsila do Amaral – or simply Tarsila, as she is known in her home country – is among the founding figures of Brazilian modernism in the first half of the 20th Century. Born in the countryside of São Paulo state in 1886, two years before the abolition of slavery in Brazil, the daughter of wealthy landowners initially conformed to the expectations projected by society on young women of her social class. As was common among Brazil’s rural aristocrats, Tarsila was educated at home by a Belgian tutor and studied French as a second language. In 1898, aged 12, she was sent to a boarding school in the city of São Paulo and in 1902 her parents took her to Barcelona and enrolled her in a catholic boarding school. Upon returning to Brazil, two years later, Tarsila married her mother’s cousin, André Teixeira Pinto in an arranged marriage organized by the family. After a honeymoon in Argentina and Chile – a trip that was considered quite adventurous at the time – she settled with her husband in one of the family’s countryside estates, giving birth to Dulce, her only child, in 1906. Up to that point, Tarsila had been living quite a conventional lifestyle. However, two years later she made a decision that was quite out of the ordinary in the extremely patriarchal society of the time and asked for a divorce. Not much is known about her married life, although art critic Aracy do Amaral 3 – also her biographer – mentions a ‘cultural imbalance’ between the In 1922, Oswald was already a published writer, although his couple as one of the reasons for the breakup. breakthrough would only come later that year, with the publication of Tarsila started to paint during her time in Barcelona, and in ‘Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar’ (Sentimental Memoirs of 1913 she relocated to São Paulo and continued to paint and play the João Miramar), a fragmentary novel that challenged the conventions piano. Around that time, she began taking lessons with William Zadig of traditional literature, having become one of the canons of (1884-1952) a Swedish sculptor, and in 1917 she took drawing lessons Brazilian modernism. Like Tarsila, Oswald came from a very wealthy from Pedro Alexandrino (1856-1942), the renowned Brazilian 19th background and had already been to Europe, where he was impressed century still-life master, setting up a studio in the same building where by the work of the Futurists. In December of that year, Tarsila returned Alexandrino taught. In 1920, she embarked to Paris with her daughter to Paris, and Oswald, to whom she had become quite close, joined her Dulce to pursue her art studies at the Académie Julian, a private art there in the beginning of 1923. This was the first of the couple’s many school that was fairly popular amongst foreign artists, as well as being extended stays in Europe, and marked an important period for both. one of the first ones to accept female students. The French capital Tarsila took lessons with Lhote, Léger and Gleizes, from whom she was then a major cultural hub, and Tarsila had her first contact with absorbed the language of cubism, while Oswald made contact with modernism both through art and literature. However, the Académie several poets and writers, including Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) – who had a very traditional curriculum and during her time there the artist played a decisive role in introducing them to the Parisian art circuit. concentrated on studies of nudes. Soon she moved on to study under While enjoying a very cosmopolitan lifestyle in Paris, her letters from artist Emile Renard, whose approach was less rigid, and the work she that period already show a strong desire to return to her roots, perhaps produced in this period already shows a slight simplification of forms. under the influence of primitivism that was then highly in fashion During her stay in Paris, Tarsila corresponded intensely with within the Parisian cultural milieu: ‘I don’t believe that the Brazilian Brazilian artist Anita Malfatti (1889-1964), who had previously studied trend is despised here. On the contrary; what people expect is for in Germany and the US and presented what is considered the first artists to bring a contribution from their own country. This is why modern art exhibition in the country in 1917. Featuring a series of the Russian ballets, Japanese prints and black music are so successful. paintings in expressionist style, the exhibition was received with Paris is tired of Parisians’. considerable hostility by the conservative local media and public. In In 1923, Tarsila painted A Negra (The Black Woman), which her letters, Anita kept Tarsila informed about the recent developments many critics today consider as one of the seminal works of of the São Paulo art scene. Although often complaining about the Brazilian modernism. According to critic Sonia Salzstein, A Negra country’s dominant provincialism, she was also starting to get close to ‘anticipated ideas in Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 Manifesto Antropófago a group of artists and writers that included several names which would (Anthrophophagite Manifesto), not to mention Tarsila’s own artistic become associated to the Modern Art Week (1922), a landmark festival production of the period between 1928 to c.1929, rightly known that celebrated modernism in the country for the first time. as ‘anthropophagic’’. According to Salzstein, ‘A Negra introduced Tarsila returned to Brazil in June 1922, when she was already 36 an irreverent, primitivist local iconography, but Tarsila, zealot of years old, and during her stay in Paris she did not managed to make cubist discipline, compressed this iconography within an ultra-flat any connections with modernist artists. In São Paulo a new phase space – almost a geometric abstraction – as if ostensibly urging the began. She started to host a salon in her studio with the ‘group of five’, denunciation of her European source’. A Negra is without a doubt an to which she belonged alongside writers Mário de Andrade, Oswald important breakthrough that marks a shift towards an unprecedented de Andrade and Menotti del Picchia, as well as Anita Malfatti. The conceptual and formal maturity in Tarsila’s painting. meetings focused on how to bring the new language of modernism Upon disembarking in Rio de Janeiro in December of 1923, Tarsila to the Brazilian context. At this point, Tarsila’s work started to show gave an interview to the newspaper Correio da Manhã, in which she a more expressionistic style, incorporating vibrant colors and quick, affirmed: ‘I am deeply Brazilian and I am going to study the taste and broken brushstrokes, a shift undoubtedly inspired by Anita’s work. art of our caipiras (country folk). In the countryside, I hope to learn 4 5 from those who have not yet been corrupted by the academy’. Soon traditional or popular motifs found in Brazilian culture, which until after her return, she showed works she had produced under her cubist then had been largely despised in academic painting as evidence of mentors in her São Paulo studio. At the time, there was a lot of talk backwardness and underdevelopment. The Rio de Janeiro trip inspired about cubism among the Brazilian cultural elites, although not much works such as Morro da Favela (Hill of the Favela, 1924), a composition had been actually seen. Alongside her own cubist-influenced paintings, of sinuous volumes rendered in pink, blue, and green that shows an Tarsila brought from Paris a small private collection of works by such idyllic view of the shantytown, where black characters and domestic contemporary artists as Delaunay, Léger, Gleizes, and others, and her animals inhabit a landscape of unpaved streets and humble housing, studio became a sort of place of initiation for the Brazilian modernists and Carnaval em Madureira (Carnival in Madureira, 1924), in which who could not afford to travel abroad. carnival-goers gather around a replica of the Eiffel Tower produced for In February 1924, Cendrars came to São Paulo and together the festivities on that year1. Lacking any sense of social denunciation or with the modernist group, visited countryside estates, went to Rio de criticism, these works nonetheless celebrated cultural traits that up to Janeiro during Carnival and took a trip to the historical towns of Minas that point had remained invisible – if not despised – in Brazil’s erudite Gerais, where they saw for the first time the 18th century baroque pictorial tradition. churches works by Aleijadinho and Ataíde. During these trips, Tarsila In this period, Tarsila began to gradually abandon the more rigid produced several sketches registering the colors and details of baroque constructivist approach learned from her cubist masters, favoring more architecture, as well as the typical colonial houses, later claiming: ‘in curvaceous lines to depict native landscapes using bold, unusual color Minas I found the colors I loved as a child’. Having been raised in the palettes. These works combine a synthesis of elements such as people, countryside, Tarsila always loved the colors used in popular festivities: plants, animals, houses, and vegetation depicted with an exuberance of ‘Later I was taught that these colors were ugly and tacky, and I followed colors and local themes. the rules of good taste. But later I took my revenge against oppression The mid-1920s mark one of the most significant moments by using these colors in my paintings: baby blue, candy cotton pink, in Tarsila’s trajectory. The works produced during her Pau-Brasil bright yellow, forest green. A clean style of painting that is fearless of metafísico/onírico (Metaphysic / Dreamlike Pau-Brasil) period – a term conventional canons.