‘Painting modern Brazil’: the right to change Tarsila do Amaral

We could even add that, now that they invade in museums, biennials and fairs the decolonizing slogans, some of their precepts were even patented by those who are now considered ‘needy to be decolonized’, and here a tarsila do Amaral is included that helped generate that exotic image of Brazil that it seems we have to forget. An image, let’s not forget, that He went to the Brazilian landscape from a Cadillac and that sought to capture the tricontinentity of this country (its pre -Columbian, African and European origin) from the models of the anthropology museums, and not always with the author ‘AT STREET’.

The good thing about all this is that her curator, the Italian Cecilia Braschi (Which in this Spanish stop is joined Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimaraes) does not hide it, it places it even in the center of the debate, and takes advantage of it to make a renewed reading of this fundamental figure of modernity as it was Tarsila do Amaral (or, as it was known for its nickname, Tarsila) from the other shore of the Atlantic.

Renewal bridge

Indeed, the Brazilian was a renewal bridge between Latin America, where it was read in European key, and Europe, where it was perceived as an exotic agent, a role, everything is said, that did not reject and even enhanced.

The exhibition of Guggenheim-Bilbao It is presented by this museum as an important chapter in the enhancement of a little known creator in Europe after the ‘revival’ that the author experienced in the US in 2019 with appointments in the MoMa and the Art Institute of Chicago. In Spain, we must add, we discover it with a very highly sample in the Juan March Foundation held in 2009, Less extensive than this (147 works now, which is not bad for an author who was not very neat, with 230 paintings throughout her career), but that did included some iconic piece (such as ‘La Negra’, which did arrive in Paris in the Luxembourg Museum, being how this is a collaboration with Grandpalaisrmn), They now miss.

Said all this, the review of his life (the inks are well charged in his biography) and his work in the Guggenheim is not trivial. It is done in a chronological sense, since it is supposed to be (re) discovering the artist, and is divided into six thematic chapters that analyze how Tarsila do Amaral He related to certain concepts and modified them (The landscape, European modernity, anthropophagy, the social facet, the return to order …). In fact, the curators play in the decoration in the room with photos of expanded landscapes of Brazil, thus illustrating the evolution of the same, from a rural space to an urban and cosmopolitan area in which the evolution of Tarsila was developed in parallel. AND What the difference from previous appointments is that it reaches the end of your life, Something that is usually ignored by being considered these more irregular years.

The tour, then, starts with two landscapes, two views from their workshop in the two cities that will be capitals in its beginning landowner and coffee grandfather, and French education (and even food), that in 1920 he travels to France to form (he will pass through Spain) and that in these he will live from the distance the significant impact of the week of the art of Sao Paulo of 1922, which will mean his return, his inclusion in the renewal Group of five and a mutation in your style.

Tarsila thus understands modernity only after his return to Brazil, converts Cubism into a previous “military service” (he had good instructors: Gleize, Léger, Lothe…), which begins to bloom in works such as ‘La Muñeca’ (1928). The exhibition emphasizes the image (built) that the artist projected and that she herself exploded: the exotic woman of the New World in Paris (‘Caipirinha’, a cubist work of 1924), the “Caipiria dressed by Poiret”, as defined by her second husband, Andrade Oswald… The 1924 figurative self -portrait with picked and stretched hair, long earrings and carmine on the lips, will become a logo.

Also to geometric lines and shapes, a colorful palette, translates the landscapes of Sao Paulo, Río and Minas Gerais, in its construction of a national and modern imaginary that responded to the racial demand of Europe. And its approach also exoted to the types (‘El Coco’) or traditions (carnival and favela). It is the appropriation and modernization of primitive myths.

Surreal empacho

More interesting will be the following two sections, which links it to Anthropophagus Movement that pivot on the figure of the ABAPORU, When the Brazilian stops copying and begins to regurgitate what devours a pre -European, pre -religious, pre -writing and precapitalist Brazil, which in Tarsila flirts with European surrealism (‘Urutu’ or studies of ‘La Negra’). And the social turn of the crack of 29 – which makes its heritage loses – the divorce of Andrade and the new relationship with the leftist intellectual Osorio César. A trip to the USSR (which earned him the jail) and the influence of Mexican muralism and Soviet graphics will mean an obvious stylistic change. As in ‘workers’ (1933), for which she was very criticized for her own social origin.

Its invisibility begins, in which Sao Paulo’s decline also influences as a cultural capital. That path remains until the end of his life (and the sample) in which, however, there will be milestones (Sao Paulo Biennials of 1951 and 1953, that of Venice in 1960), with another turn towards the prevailing geometric abstraction. Less interesting work, in which the artist repeats types of other times.

Tarsila do Amaral

‘Painting modern Brazil’. Guggenheim Museum. Bilbao. AVDA ABANDOBARRA, 2. Commissioners: Cecilia Braschi and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimaraes. Until June 1. Four stars.

In an interview for the magazine ‘Jaragua’ in 1950, Tarsila acknowledges his “Right to change throughout your life”. The Bilbao expo shows it. And facets will continue to emerge. It is just a matter of dismantling the myth and making the artist appear in the current contexts. As happened in Paris.