All the lives of Tarsila do Amaral, the icon of Brazilian modernism

BilbaoThe Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral (Capivari, 1886-Sao Paulo, 1973) is an icon of modern Brazilian art and the Latin American avant-garde. The daughter of a family of coffee landowners, her grandfather owned up to 400 slaves working on the estates. In addition to receiving piano and French lessons, she and her sister Cecilia boarded at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón in Barcelona between 1902 and 1904, where Tarsila excelled. At the time when do Amaral was training, Paris was the art capital, and if she wanted to succeed internationally, it was essential to settle there, as can be seen in the major exhibition dedicated to her by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao until June 1st, entitled Tarsila do Amaral. Painting modern Brazil.

One of the most emblematic works on display is a self-portrait that reveals how, on a second trip to Paris, Do Amaral became aware that she was an artist, but at the same time, she was like a mask: she appeared dressed in an elegant red cloak by Jean Patou, with this image. a foreign female artist in Europe, although one might also think that she gave in to the old macho imperative that women should be beautiful and kind. curator of the museum and curator of the exhibition in Bilbao, along with Cecilia Braschi, who launched the exhibition at the Luxembourg Museum last October. 140 works from Do Amaral's entire career, including paintings and drawings. The tour begins with her formative years and when she did her "military service of Cubism" in Paris, as she herself said, and moved around with artists such as André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes, the three who influenced her the most. Miró, María Blanchard and Robert and Sonia Delaunay. A black woman, can only be seen through two sketches. It is a painting that is potentially controversial today because the subject is said to be a slave who breastfed him. Braschi does not believe there is "personal racism" on Do Amaral's part, but rather "an intrinsic, stereotypical, cultural racism." An iconic painting can also be seen with preparatory drawings, Abaporu, which Do Amaral gave to her husband, the poet Oswald de Andrade. In the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language, the title means Man eats man, and around painting emerged the anthropophagy movement, which meant the forging of a modern Brazilian art based on the assimilation of European avant-garde movements.

A final stage between light and shadow

Beyond the best-known period, the tour ends with the darkest years when Do Amaral was ruined by the Crash of 1929 and separated from De Andrades. He then traveled to the Soviet Union with his new partner, the psychiatrist Osório César, and expressed his commitment to paintings with working-class themes in a style between socialist realism and Mexican muralism, among which stands out WorkersFollowing a trip to the Soviet Union, she was imprisoned in Brazil for nearly a month on charges of proselytizing. Neither the lower-class painters nor the critics welcomed this change, although she always asserted her right to evolve.

In his final years, the artist grieved the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter and returned to earlier themes such as landscape, from the abstract perspective of the time. "Tarsila had a good working strategy and took full advantage of her social position, because at that time, being a female artist was a disadvantage. In Paris, they saw her as exotic, in Brazil as European, and in Russia, as liberal. So, she was always out of place, but she took advantage and offered the Europeans what they were looking for in the sotic and what they were looking for in the Parisian exotic," says Braschi.