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.