Art is divine

Light of Brazil

By Micha Christos

MUSÉE DU LUXEMBOURG

Paris

From October 9, 2024 to February 2, 2025

TARSILA DO AMARAL

PAINTING MODERN BRAZIL

Tarsila do Amaral A Feira I [The Market I] 1924 Oil on canvas 60.8 × 73.1 cm Private collection © Photo Romulo Fialdini © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Figura em Azul [Figure in blue] 1923

Oil on canvas 81.50 cm x 60 cm Private collection

Tarsila do Amaral Porto I [Port I] 1953 Oil on canvas 70 x 100 cm

Banco Central, São Paulo, on deposit at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo -

Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) © Photo MASP © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Study based on illustrations for the magazine Jaraguá Around 1950 Gouache and ink on paper 30 x 22 cm Private collection © Photo Falcão Júnior © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral was born in 1886 into a wealthy bourgeois family of coffee producers in the São Paulo region and grew up there learning French.

She followed the academic teaching of Pedro Alexandrino Borges before leaving, at the age of 30, for Paris to enroll at the Académie Julian with famous professors such as Fernand Léger, Albert Gleizes and André Lhote.Adored in Brazil as a central figure of her country’s modernism, Tarsila do Amaral created, from the 1920s, an original body of work that drew on the indigenous imagination of a country in full transformation.

At the origin of the metaphorical anthropophagic movement, her painting evolved between São Paulo and Paris at the time of cubism and primitivism in vogue in the French capital.

Tarsila do Amaral A Metrópole [The metropolis] 1958 Oil on canvas 88 x 109 cm Private collection

Her gaze as a white, aristocratic, erudite and cosmopolitan woman paradoxically represents a popular and authentic Brazil at the crossroads of several cultures.

Her work raises social, identity and racial questions between tradition and the avant-garde. Widely recognized and exhibited in her country of origin, a female artist with a political and activist dimension, exhibitions dedicated to her are rare abroad.

This first retrospective in France brings together around 150 works. Her rich production from the 1920s offers landscapes with bright colors and clear lines alternating with dreamlike visions as mysterious as they are fascinating

Tarsila do Amaral Auto-retrato I [Self-portrait I] 1924 Oil on cardboard on chipboard 41 x 37 cm Acervo Artístico-Cultural dos Palácios do Governo do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil © Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces of the State of São Paulo / photo Romulo Fialdini © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Abaporu V 1928 Indian ink on paper 24.5 × 18.5 cm Private collection © Photo Romulo Fialdini © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Untitled Illustration project for Blaise Cendrars’s Roadmaps Around 1924 Ink on paper 20.3 x 26.6 cm Swiss National Library, Cendrars Fund, Bern © Photo Swiss National Library, Bern © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Untitled Illustration project for Blaise Cendrars’s Roadmaps Around 1924 Ink on paper 23.2 x 31 cm Swiss National Library, Cendrars Fund, Bern © Photo Swiss National Library, Bern © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

Tarsila do Amaral Auto-retrato (Red Coat) [Self-portrait (Red Coat)] 1923 Oil on canvas 73 x 60.5 cm Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro © Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram, Rio de Janeiro / photo Jaime Acioli © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A

On the other hand, her last paintings are based on an almost abstract geometry and the artist updated her previous productions until the 1960s.

Tarsila expresses a peaceful power in a sure line of a very feminine solar roundness. She was able to create work anchored in the culture of her time by opening her gaze to the future through her propensity to renew herself with a luminous grace.

Tarsila do Amaral Cartão-postal [Postcard] 1929 Oil on canvas 127.5 x 142.5 cm Private collection © Private collection, Rio de Janeiro / Photo Jaime Acioli © Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A