Show Portinari Raros, in Brasilia, presents mixtures of genius

The exhibition forms part of the artist's 120th birthday celebrations.

The paints that illuminated the brushes of Candido Portinari (1903-1962) mix between Brodowski (SP), where he was born, and the world. Between denunciation and tenderness. Between the figurative and the surreal. Colors from the past and looks ahead of time. Between the coffee bags and the hoe in the hands of the black man. Between affection for the country and revolt against injustices. Between the warning about wars and the desire for peace.

In the Portinari Raro exhibition, which opened last week at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, in Brasília, with free admission, more than 200 works that are lesser known or even unknown to the general public reveal the genius of the artist with multiple nonconformist inks.

“The big themes are social, but there are also aspects of childhood, work in the countryside and in the city, popular types, festivals, folklore, fauna, flora and landscape”, explains professor João Candido Portinari, son of the artist and responsible for the Portinari Project, whose mission is to democratize access to his father's plural art.

From the start
At the exhibition in Brasília, curated by Marcello Dantas, there are works from different stages of Portinari's life, such as the extremely rare Baile na Roça, produced in 1923, when the artist was only 20 years old. It is the first with a national theme. According to the artist's son, as the painting was not well accepted at the time at the School of Fine Arts, Portinari, disappointed, sold the work and was never able to find it again. “He spent his whole life trying to recover the four. He died without the thrill of finding his youthful canvas.”

The Portinari Project located it in the early 1980s. The work is in Brasília for the first time. The painting honors Brodowski's family and friends. Still without the same paints that would make him famous.

Personal formation and ideals would be born together from the difficulties of poor immigrant parents from Italy. They restarted life on the coffee farm. It was there that the artist discovered the need to express himself with paint and words. “Portinari was born in a difficult situation. He only managed to study up to the third grade. He couldn't continue because he had to help his 11 siblings and their parents with the coffee harvest,” says the researcher son.

The family history in Brodowski has space in the exhibition and helps to understand the origins of the artist's thinking, with a country accent and insight. “Portinari was 11 years old when he made a drawing by maestro Carlos Gomes, copied from a cigarette pack that used to exist”. City friends were amazed by the creative boy's talent. So much so that he became an illustrator in those early art years.

“Enormous curiosity”
The professor explains that Portinari's works revealed an enormous curiosity about science and technology in the face of the cultural effervescence of the first decades of the 20th century. “He started to use mathematical elements in his work”, which included proportions and chromatic studies. “Portinari was immensely curious to know how other artists painted”.