Partner Pagu
Queer Places:
Av. Tarsila do Amaral, Capivari - SP, 13360-000, Brazil
Académie Julian, Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris
Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral (September 1, 1886[1]
– January 17, 1973), internationally known as Tarsila do Amaral or
simply Tarsila, is considered one of the leading Latin American
modernist artists, described as "the Brazilian painter who best achieved
Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style."[2]
She had a relationship with Pagu, a Brazilian writer,
poet, playwright, journalist, and translator. Pagu was with Tarsila in 1929 when
she met her
next partner, Elsie Houston, a Brazilian poet living in France and was married
to French surrealist artist Benjamin Péret.
Tarsila do Amaral was a member of the
Grupo dos Cinco, which was a group of five Brazilian artists who are
considered the biggest influence in the modern art movement in Brazil. The
other members of the Grupo dos Cinco are
Anita Malfatti,
Menotti Del Picchia,
Mário de Andrade, and
Oswald de Andrade. Tarsila was also instrumental in the formation of the
Antropofagia movement (1928-1929); she was in fact the one who
inspired
Oswald de Andrade's famous
Anthropophagic Manifesto.[3]
Tarsila do Amaral was born in
Capivari,[4]
a small town in the countryside of the state of
São Paulo. She was born to a wealthy family of farmers and landowners who
grew coffee,
two years before the end of slavery in Brazil.[5]
At that time in Brazil women were not encouraged to seek higher education,
especially if they came from affluent families. Despite coming from a
well-to-do family, Tarsila had her family's support in obtaining higher
education. As a teenager, Tarsila and her parents traveled to
Spain, where
Tarsila caught people's eyes by drawing and painting copies of the artwork she
saw at her school's archives.[6]
Tarsila attended school in Barcelona, and later trained privately in her
hometown under painter, Pedro Alexandrino Borges (1864-1942). She also
attended the Academie Julian in Paris and studied with other prominent artists
(1920-1923).[7]
In 1926, Tarsila married Oswald de Andrade and they continued to travel
throughout Europe and Middle East. In Paris, in 1926, she had her first solo
exhibition at the Galerie Percier. The paintings shown at the exhibition
included São Paulo (1924), A Negra[12]
(1923), Lagoa Santa (1925), and Morro de Favela (1924). Her
works were praised and called "exotic", "original", "naïve", and "cerebral",
and they commented on her use of bright colors and tropical images.[13]
From left to right: Pagu, Elsie Lessa, Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti & Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra circa 1928
In 1931, Tarsila traveled to the
Soviet Union.[1]
While there, she had exhibitions of her works in
Moscow at
the Museum of Occidental Art, and she traveled to various other cities and
museums. The poverty and plight of the
Russian people had a great effect on her, as seen in her painting
Workers (Operarios) (1933).[18]
Upon her return to Brazil in 1932, she became involved in the São Paulo
Constitutional Revolt against the dictatorship in Brazil, led by
Getúlio Vargas. Along with others who were seen as leftist, she was
imprisoned for a month because her travels made her appear to be a communist
sympathizer.
The remainder of her career she focused on social themes. Representative of
this period is the painting Segundo Class (1931), which has
impoverished Russian men, women and children as the subject matter. She also
began writing a weekly arts and culture column for the Diario de São Paulo,
which continued until 1952.
In 1938, Tarsila finally settled permanently in São Paulo where she spent
the remainder of her career painting Brazilian people and landscapes. In 1950,
she had an exhibition at
Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo where a reviewer called her "the most
Brazilian of painters here, who represents the sun, birds, and youthful
spirits of our developing country, as simple as the elements of our land and
nature…. She died in
São Paulo 1973.[1]
Tarsila's life is a mark of the warm Brazilian character and an expression of
it tropical exuberance."[19]
Besides the 230 paintings, hundreds of drawings, illustrations, prints,
murals, and five sculptures, Tarsila's legacy is her effect on the direction
of Latin American art. Tarsila moved modernism forward in Latin America, and
developed a style unique to Brazil. Following her example, other Latin
American artists were influenced to begin utilizing indigenous Brazilian
subject matter, and developing their own style. The
Amaral Crater on Mercury is named after her.
In 2018
MoMA opened a solo exhibition of her work, the eighth retrospective on
Latin America artists following exhibitions on
Diego Rivera,
Cândido Portinari,
Roberto Matta,
Manuel Álvarez Bravo,
Armando Reverón,
José Clemente Orozco and
Joaquín Torres García.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsila_do_Amaral
- Gender and Society in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema
David William Foster
University of Texas Press, Jun 28, 2010