Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism - Part 2

Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism - Part 2

at the Royal Academy of Art.

In this second section of this wonderful exhibition I am copying the introduction from section 1 so that if people don't want to look at section 1 which you can see  here ,  they can still get a full understanding. If you do not want to read the introduction again, scroll down to the first artist.

The exhibition is exploring Brazilian art history through the work of ten artists, active between 1910 and the 1970s.  During that time a flourishing in the arts - including painting, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, music and literature - swept across the country, and was known collectively as Brazilian Modernism. This was not a defined movement but rather a coming together of different cultural figures who campaigned for Brazil to move away from the old-fashioned traditional forms of art that were rooted in the colonial (1500-1815) and Imperial (1815-89) periods before Brazil  became a republic in 1889. As a young, ambitious and optimistic nation, Brazil wanted to create its own distinctive identity. It rejected European tastes for academic art and typical subjects such as historical allegories and religious scenes in favour of those that reflected and celebrated the country's cultural diversity.

Brazil has a significant Indigenous population but one that has been increasingly marginalised following the influx of immigrant settles that began during the colonial period. Portuguese colonists forcibly brought more than four million enslaved people from West Africa across the Atlantic, with the aboliton of slavery only taking place in 1888. Later, significant populations of Italians, Japanese, Germans and Syrians settled in Brazil, further enriching its extraordinary ethnic diversity.

Although many modernists lived and studied abroad, mainly in  Europe of the US, they returned to Brazil determined to fashion a new artistic identity that looked inwards rather than outwards for inspiration. Aside from incorporating modern approaches to art, artists travelled acrross the country reflecting on the different peoples and places they encountered and integrating them into their work. This exhibition celebrates this 60 year period, revealing the gradual move from the representational to the abstract.

Tarsila do Amaral, 1886-1973:

Desiring to be 'the painter of my country', Tarsila (as she signed her work) developed a distinctly Brazilian voice within modern art. After studying art in the Academie Julian in Paris, a school famed for offering women artists access to life drawing classes, she returned to Sao Paolo.

In 1928, her painting Abaporu, a simplified solitary figure with distorted proportions, provoked a fascinated reaction among her peers.  It inspired Oswald de Andrade to write the Manifesto Antropofago, which proposed artists engage in 'cultural cannibalism' that would metaphorically 'devour' wide-ranging influences to create something new and uniquely Brazilian.

 

Favela Hill, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Lagoa Santa, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Settlement I, 1952, (oil on canvas)

Market II, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Lake, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Second Class, 1933, (oil on canvas)

Blue Portrait (Sergio Milliet), 1923, (oil on canvas)

Model, 1923, (oil on canvas)

Country Dance, 1950-61, (oil on canvas)

Self-Portrait with Orange Dress, 1921, (oil on canvas)


Vincente do Rego Monteiro, 1899-1970:

Artist and writer Vincente do Rego Monteiro was one of the first modernists to engage with the Indigenous cultures of Brazil.

Despite having no direct contact with Brazil's Indigenous populations, he incorporated their themes and motifs into his early works. This in turn, led Rego Monteiro to engage with a group of young artists and intellecturals, joining them in organising the Semana de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo in 1922. The various exhibitions, poetry recitals and concerts of that week challenged the authority and conservatism of the Brazilian establishment and called for a new, progressive modern art.

Crucifixion, 1922, (oil on canvas)

Seated Woman, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Bathers, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Archer, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Boy and Ewe, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Tennis, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Indigenous Composition, 1922, (oil on wood)

The highly sophisticated Marajoara were a society that lived on the Martajo, the world's largest river island located where the Amazon meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Skilled at agriculture and managing flood waters, the Marajoara created highly detailed and decorated ceramics, first excavated in 1871, that served both functional and ritual purposes. Rego Monteiro was captivated by these and studied examples in the collections of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, incorporating their designs into his early paintings.

Indigenous Composition, 1922, (oil and ink on wood)

Indigenous Composition, 1922, (oil on wood)

Woman in Front of the Mirror, 1922, (oil on canvas)

Candido Portinari, 1903-1962:

A chronicler of ordinary Brazilians, Candido Portinari understood his paintings as a vehicle for social change. The son of Italian immigrants, he grew up in relative poverty on a coffee plantation.

 
Whilst studying art at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes which he entered as a free student, he won a scholarship to travel Europe in 1928, and spent two years moving around France, England, Italy and Spain. Portinari sought to create a national art by representing those of the hinterlands and the often harsh reality of their lives. He became renowned for his socialist-realist style depicting social and racial themes prevalent in Brazilian society.

Portrait of Mario de Andrade, 1935, (oil on canvas)

Mixed-Race woman, 1934, (oil on canvas)

Coffee Agricultural Worker, 1934, (oil on canvas)

Favela with Musicians, 1957, (tempera on wood)

Settler, 1935, (tempera on canvas)

Woman from Bahia, 1947, (oil on canvas)

Bumba Meu, Boi, 1956, (oil on candboard)

Migrants, 1944, (oil on canvas)

The vultures that fly over the family, the barren landscape and the dark tones emphasise the desolation Portinari captures in the macabre faces of the  frozen figures. The rounded belly of the child on the right of the painting speaks to the prevalent childhood illness caused by malnutrition.

Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism - Part 1

Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism - part 1

at the Royal Academy of Art.

A wonderful exhibition exploring Brazilian art history through the work of ten artists, active between 1910 and the 1970s.  During that time a flourishing in the arts - including painting, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, music and literature - swept across the country, and was known collectively as Brazilian Modernism. This was not a defined movement but rather a coming together of different cultural figures who campaigned for Brazil to move away from the old-fashioned traditional forms of art that were rooted in the colonial (1500-1815) and Imperial (1815-89) periods before Brazil  became a republic in 1889. As a young, ambitious and optimistic nation, Brazil wanted to create its own distinctive identity. It rejected European tastes for academic art and typical subjects such as historical allegories and religious scenes in favour of those that reflected and celebrated the country's cultural diversity.

Brazil has a significant Indigenous population but one that has been increasingly marginalised following the influx of immigrant settlers that began during the colonial period. Portuguese colonists forcibly brought more than four million enslaved people from West Africa across the Atlantic, with the aboliton of slavery only taking place in 1888. Later, significant populations of Italians, Japanese, Germans and Syrians settled in Brazil, further enriching its extraordinary ethnic diversity.

Although many modernists lived and studied abroad, mainly in  Europe or the US, they returned to Brazil determined to fashion a new artistic identity that looked inwards rather than outwards for inspiration. Aside from incorporating modern approaches to art, artists travelled acrross the country reflecting on the different peoples and places they encountered and integrating them into their work. This exhibition celebrates this 60 year period, revealing the gradual move from the representational to the abstract.

Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994):

Marx's affinity for native Brazilian plants saw him become one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th century.

He studied visual arts but was interested in garden design and contributed to the landscape design of the new capital city Brasilia, inaugurated in 1960. From 1934 to 1937, he was the director of parks and gardens in Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco. Upon returning to Rio, he designed numerous gardens for private clients as well as large-scale municipal projects such as the famous mosaic pavements of Copacabana and Flamengo. He became celebrated for his landscape garden designs and planting schemes but continued to paint throughout his life.

Farm with Seven Piglets, 1943, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of a Young Man, 1943, (oil on canvas)

Landscape, 1943, (oil on canvas)

Anita Malfatti ( 1889-1964):

Malfatti was a trailblazing artist whose modernist paintings shocked the Brazilian establishment. She was born in Sao Paulo but her family moved to Berlin when she was 10. She returned to Brazil in 1916, where she held the Exposicao de Pinctura Moderna  Anita Malfatti, in Sao Paulo, clearly positioning herself as a modernist artist. Her work depicted ordinary Brazilians going about everyday tasks, hitherto a subject deemed unworthy for paintings. The show was the first to challenge the orthodoxy of academic-based art, and as such is celebrated as the first modernist exhibition in Brazil. However, it was harshly criticised at the time; the impact on Malfatti was long-lasting and caused her to be a less progressive artist going forward. Nonetheless, having befriended many in Sao Paulo's modernist circles, she was to be a pivotal figure in the Modern Art Week that took place in the city in 1922. This event played a crucial role in briging Brazilian Modernism to prominence.

In 1923 Malfatti moved to Paris and exhibited at the Salon D'Automne in 1927. She returned to Sao Paulo in 1928 but the days of her experimental and progressive art were behind her.

First Cubist Nude, 1916, (oil on canvas)

Russian Student, 1915, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Mario de Andrade, 1923, (oil on canvas)

Yellow Man, 1915/16, (oil on canvas)

Japanese Man, 1915/16, (oil on canvas)

Seascape, Monhegan, 1915, (oil on canvas)

Wave, 1915-17, (oil on wood)

Seascape (Cliffs), 1915-16, (oil on wood)

Lighthouse, 1915, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Oswald, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Chinese Woman, 1921-22, (oil on canvas)

Man of Seven Colours, 1915/16, (pastel and charcoal on paper)

Lasar Segall, 1889-1957:

As an outsider in both Brazil and Europe, Segall explored themes of social injustice, oppression and immigration in his paintings. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, to a Jewish family, he studied in Germany. He first visited Brazil in 1913, spending the year meeting fellow artists and intellectuals and exhibiting and selling his work. Upon returning to Europe, he became one of the leading figures of the Dresden Expressionist movement.

In 1923 Segall migrated to Sao Paulo. Alongside Anita Malfatti and Tarsila do Amaral, he founded the Sociedade Pro-Arte Moderna which aimed to promote modern art; he acted as its director until 1935. Despite being embraced by Brazil's modernists, such acceptance was not universal, and his work was at times subject to anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic attacks.

Lucy with Flower, 1939-42, (oil on canvas)

Mixed-Race Woman with Child, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Brazilian Landscape, 1925, (oil on canvas)

Mixed-Race Boy II, 1924, (oil on canvas)

Banana Grove, 1927, (oil on canvas)

This composition speaks to the influx of European migrants who arrived to work on Brazil's agricultural plantations following the abolition of slavery in 1888.

Pogrom, 1937, (oil and samd on canvas)

Towards the end of the 30s and 40s Segall turned away from the colourful landscapes of Brazil and created works that demonstrated his concern with the suffering that was occurring in Central and Eastern Europe at the outset of WWII. In Pogrom (devastation in Yiddish), a pile of corpses fills the painting, depicting one of many anti-Semitic massacres perpetuated during the period. It is a scene of destruction and horror, yet overhead a dove can be seen flying, perhaps used by Segall as a symbol for peace.

Light Reflecting in the Forrest, 1943, (oil on canvas)

Favela, 1954-55, (oil and sand on canvas)

Between 1890 and 1930, favelas emerged on the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro in the wake of the city's demolition of corticos (high-density tenement blocks) to combat a public health crisis, which forced those of the poorer polulation into the streets. Initially consisting of wooden shacks and with no access to public services, favelas were perceived as places of extreme poverty and crime. Over time, however, they were viewed more sympathetically.

Portrait of Mario de Andrade, 1927, (oil on canvas)

Boy with Geckos, 1924, (oil on canvas)