The exponent of modernism in Latin America

France celebrates Tarsila do Amaral with the largest exhibition of her work in Europe

Until February 2, the exponent of modernism in Latin America is the protagonist at the Luxembourg Museum.
The exhibition Tarsila do Amaral, painting modern Brazil brings together 150 works, including 49 canvases and 64 drawings.
An exponent of modernism in Latin America and one of the most influential cultural figures in the history of Brazil, the painter Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) already has a major exhibition in Europe, which is being consecrated by the Luxembourg Museum in Paris from October 9 to February 2, 2025, almost one hundred years after the exhibition that made her famous in that same capital.
The exhibition, which brings together 150 works, including 49 canvases and 64 drawings, is also one of the most complete on the Brazilian artist, along with Tarsila Popular (2019), at the Museum of Art of Sao Paulo (MASP), and the 2018 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA).

The Paris exhibition, entitled Tarsila do Amaral, painting modern Brazil, will also travel to the Guggenheim in Bilbao in the first quarter of 2025, said the curator of the exhibition, Cecilia Braschi.
"It is a retrospective that covers her entire career, from beginning to end," said this specialist in 20th century South American art. She added that the objective is "to get away from this somewhat simplistic discourse that foreign artists come to Paris, learn modernity and leave."
"The tour, on the contrary, shows that this relationship is much more complex, and that there would not have been a modern project by Tarsila if she had not arrived with her own modern Brazilian baggage, which was being formed at that time," she added.

The exhibition includes the Parisian period; the cannibalism movement – one of the foundations of Brazilian identity that advocated enrichment from its own culture and from the West –; the communist period; and the phase dedicated to the development of Brazil.
Culturally more French

Born into a family of landowners from the interior of Sao Paulo, a region that was already beginning to emerge at the beginning of the 20th century as an economic and financial center, Tarsila was raised "like all the girls of the Brazilian aristocracy of the time. She was culturally more French than Brazilian," Braschi pointed out.
Bilingual, the young artist spent her first year in the French capital, from 1921 to 1922, a stay from which, as she herself confessed, she returned "without any interesting information", but with "some nice dresses".

It was from 1922, upon her return to Sao Paulo shortly after the celebration of the Modern Art Week of that same year (a framework for Brazilian culture), when Tarsila's talent "exploded", according to the curator.

Her two self-portraits from 1923 and 1924 are a sample of the Parisian influence, but also of the beginning of an unmistakable style that was exuberant in its colours and forceful in its forms.

Tarsila formed, together with her partner at the time, the poet and essayist Oswald de Andrade, "the binomial of Brazilian modernism". She in painting and he in literature.

'A Cuca' (1924), 'Carnaval em Madureira' (1924) and 'Urutu' (1928) are some of the paintings that capture Brazilian customs and folklore that would become the basis of the cultural identity of the young country. Curator Braschi drew attention for the way she depicts black people.
"Her way of depicting them creates controversy today. Some see it as a racist and sexist stereotype. The painter does it from a perspective in which blacks had a subordinate position," she explained.

An example is 'A Negra' (1923), an oil painting with traces of primitivism in which a black woman with enormous breasts is portrayed, inspired by a former slave who breastfed Tarsila.
Jailed for being a communist

After ending her relationship with Oswald de Andrade in the late 1920s, the painter entered a new phase, marked by her trip to the Soviet Union with her new partner, the psychiatrist Osório César.

Coinciding with the stock market crash of 1929 and the collapse of the Western economy, Tarsila moved to a more sombre and pessimistic tone influenced by social realism and Mexican muralism.
'Operarios' (1933), a tribute to the working class of a Sao Paulo in the midst of the industrial revolution, is one of the emblematic canvases of that phase.

"At that time Tarsila no longer had the support of her father, who had died, and she had financial problems. She had to go to work, something she had never done before," said Braschi.

Her communist proselytism led her to one of the most traumatic experiences of her life: she was imprisoned for a month in 1932 during the government of Gétulio Vargas.
In her last artistic period, coinciding with the beginning of her longest relationship with the Rio de Janeiro journalist Luiz Martins, the painter captured the development of the city of Sao Paulo, which between 1920 and 1960 grew exponentially, fueled by different waves of immigrants from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. 'A Metrópole' (1958) captures the urban jungle that her city became.

Tarsila do Amaral, painting modern Brazil has loans from several Brazilian museums and private collectors.
However, one of her great works is missing in Paris, 'Abaporu' (1928), exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (Malba). "For them it is like their Mona Lisa, they don't let it out," Braschi confessed.
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