Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral (Capivari, September 1, 1886 - São Paulo, January 17, 1973) was a Brazilian painter, draftsman and translator. She is considered one of the most significant exponents of modernist art in Latin America.
A member of the so-called Grupo dos Cinco along with Anita Malfatti, Menotti Del Picchia, Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade, she also contributed to the formation of the so-called Movimento antropofágico, of which her painting Abaporu is one of the earliest expressions.
Tarsila do Amaral's Biography
Family and early years
Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral was born on September 1, 1886, in Capivari, a municipality located in the interior of the State of São Paulo, to José Estanislau do Amaral Filho and Lídia Dias de Aguiar.
Her paternal grandfather was José Estanislau do Amaral, a wealthy fazendeiro paulista. Tarsila was his second-born daughter; his siblings include Milton, father of Brazilian geologist Sérgio Estanislau do Amaral.
José Estanislau do Amaral Filho inherited his father's fortune including several farms on which Tarsila spent his childhood with his family. Initially, the family lived in the Fazenda São Bernardo, located near Capivari, and later moved to the Fazenda Santa Tereza do Alto, in Monte Serrat, near Santos.
Tarsila parents, however, did not neglect to provide their children with a proper education. In keeping with the prevailing cultural atmosphere in Brazil at the time, which still bore the influence of the imperial period, Tarsila's education had a strongly pro-French bias.
She also acquired, thanks to her first teacher, Belgian Marie van Varemberg d'Egmont, a good command of written and spoken French.
Her studies in São Paulo and Barcelona
Tarsila entered a boarding school run by nuns in the Santana neighborhood of São Paulo and then moved on to Colégio Sion. Her parents believing they could offer their daughter a higher education, enrolled her in the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon in Barcelona, where she studied for two years. In this context she had her first contacts with painting.
The first marriage of Tarsila do Amaral
Upon her return from Europe in 1906, Tarsila married physician André Teixeira Pinto. Her husband, however, opposed Tarsila's artistic interests, demanding that she devote herself exclusively to household chores. Such frictions led to the couple's separation.
From the marriage was born Tarsila's only daughter, Dulce. Shortly after her birth Tarsila returned to live with her parents, taking her daughter with her.
The beginning of her artistic career
Tarsila do Amaral began her "serious" painting training in 1917, under the guidance of naturalist painter Pedro Alexandrino Borges. He later had the German Georg Fischer-Elpons as his teacher. In 1920 she went to Paris where she attended the Académie Julian and Émile Renard's atelier.
Although she had already come into contact with new artistic trends and the avant-garde in Paris, Tarsila only concretely adhered to modernist ideas following her return to Brazil in 1922. In São Paulo she was introduced by Anita Malfatti to the modernists Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, and Menotti Del Picchia.
Prior to her return from Europe that group had promoted the arts festival known as Semana de Arte Moderna, held between February 11 and 18, 1922, at the Municipal Theater in São Paulo. The event had great significance in the development of modernism in Brazil.
Its participants aimed to change the national artistic style by encouraging the formation of an original style that incorporated European and indigenous elements of Brazilian culture. With Tarsila's inclusion in the group came the formation of the so-called Grupo dos Cinco.
Tarsila meanwhile returned to Europe and was united in marriage in January 1923 to Oswald de Andrade; the couple visited Portugal and Spain. Back in Paris Tarsila came into contact with the Cubist movement: she attended André Lhote's academy and met Pablo Picasso, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger. The latter in particular had a significant influence on Tarsila's painting style.
The Pau-Brasil and Anthropophagy phases.
In 1924 Tarsila undertook a journey through Brazil in the company of Brazilian modernists and the Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars, in the course of which he came into contact with various local realities; from this experience he drew inspiration to elaborate a national form of art.
To this period date several drawings from which paintings would later be made. Tarsila also illustrated poems composed by Oswald de Andrade during the trip, including his important collection entitled Pau Brasil, published in 1924.
In the artistic manifesto also called Pau Brasil, Andrade emphasized how Brazilian culture was the result of importing models of European origin; he therefore called on Brazilian artists to create artistic products that were an expression of an authentically indigenous culture in order to export the national culture to the world.
The name Pau Brasil derives precisely from the name of the wood that had been in the colonial period one of Brazil's main export products. In the manifesto also Andrade urged artists to approach the modernist style.
At this stage Tarsila modified his choice of colors, which became more vibrant, conveying the chromatic exuberance of Brazilian tropical settings and subjects. A work from this period is E.F.C.B.(Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil) of 1924.
In addition to naturalistic subjects Tarsila was also interested in the manifestations of modernity in Brazil, depicted by machines and other objects associated with technological progress.
In 1926 Tarsila married Oswald de Andrade and in the same year he held his first solo exhibition, at the Percier Gallery in Paris. Among the works presented were São Paulo (1924), A Negra (1923), Lagoa Santa (1925) and Morro de Favela (1924). In 1928 he painted the important work Abaporu (a name of Tupi origin that can be translated as "man eating human flesh").
The title of the work was suggested by Raul Bopp and Oswald de Andrade, who shortly thereafter started the Movimento Antropofágico.
This movement, taking up elements of Pau Brasil, proposes the absorption (in analogy to the cannibalistic ritual in which one devours one's enemy in order to absorb its positive traits) by Brazilian culture of foreign influences in order to extract from it the elements useful for the construction of original and national characters.
In July 1929 Tarsila exhibited his works for the first time in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. In the same year, due to the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, Tarsila's family was hit hard by the effects of the coffee demand crisis and was forced to sell its fazenda. Also in 1929 Oswald de Andrade separated from Tarsila to marry writer Patrícia Rehder Galvão.
In 1930 Tarsila obtained the position of curator at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. She initiated the organization of the collection of what was the first paulista art museum. She was fired, however, with Getúlio Vargas coming to power.
The trip to the Soviet Union and the social phase.
Tarsila came to communism in the early 1930s through the influence of her new comrade, psychiatrist and militant communist Osório César. In 1931 Tarsila put some works from his collection up for sale in order to raise enough funds for a trip to the Soviet Union with Osório César.
The couple visited Moscow, Leningrad, and Odessa. In Moscow Tarsila had the opportunity to exhibit at the State Museum of Modern Western Art (Государственный музей нового западного искусства, Gosudarstvennyĭ muzeĭ novogo zapadnogo iskusstva).
He later visited Constantinople, Belgrade and Berlin. The couple finally landed in Paris, where due to lack of money Tarsila worked as a laborer. In 1932 the couple finally returned to Brazil.
Back home, because of her participation in the activities of leftist political movements and travel to the Soviet Union Tarsila was considered suspect by the authorities and was imprisoned for several months in 1932.
The socially themed works Operários and Segunda Classe date from this phase. Around the mid-1930s Tarsila became romantically involved with writer Luis Martins, whom she later married.
Beginning in the 1940s Tarsila returned to a style of painting more similar to that which had characterized her production in the 1920s.
She exhibited in the first and second São Paulo Biennials and was honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM) in 1960. In 1963 she had a dedicated room at the São Paulo Biennial, and in the following year she also exhibited at the 32nd Venice Art Biennale.
Tarsila do Amaral's last years
In 1965 Tarsila underwent spinal surgery due to recurring problems that afflicted her; however, the operation was unsuccessful due to a medical error and Tarsila became paralyzed.
In 1966 Tarsila also lost her daughter Dulce, who died from complications related to diabetes. She approached spiritualism at that time.
Tarsila put several of her paintings up for sale at that time, donating some of the money obtained to an organization administered by Chico Xavier, with whom she became friends. Tarsila was visited by Chico Xavier on several occasions and the two kept up a correspondence.
Tarsila do Amaral died at the Hospital da Beneficência Portuguesa in São Paulo on January 17, 1973. She is buried in the Cemitério da Consolação.
Tarsila do Amaral's Works
- Patio with a Heart of Jesus (Isle of Wright) - 1921
- The Spanish Girl (Paquita) - 1922
- Blue Hat - 1922
- Daisies of Mário de Andrade - 1922
- Tree - 1922
- The Passport (Portrait de femme) - 1922
- Portrait of Oswald de Andrade - 1922
- Portrait of Mário de Andrade - 1922
- Study (Nude) - 1923
- Manteau Rouge - 1923
- Rio de Janeiro - 1923
- The Black Woman - 1923
- Caipirinha - 1923
- Study (La Tasse) - 1923
- Figure in Blue (Background with oranges) - 1923
- Still Life with Clocks - 1923
- The Model - 1923
- Pont Neuf - 1923
- Rio de Janeiro - 1923
- Blue portrait (Sérgio Milliet) - 1923
- Portrait of Oswald de Andrade - 1923
- Self-portrait - 1924
- São Paulo (Gazo) - 1924
- The Cuca - 1924
- São Paulo - 1924
- São Paulo (Gazo) - 1924
- The Fair I - 1924
- Morro da Favela - 1924
- Carnival in Madureira - 1924
- Angels - 1924
- EFCB (Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil) - 1924
- The Fisherman - 1925
- The Family - 1925
- Fruit Seller - 1925
- Landscape with Bull I - 1925
- The Station - 1925
- The Papaya Tree - 1925
- The Fair II - 1925
- Saint Lake - 1925
- Palm Trees - 1925
- Romance - 1925
- Sacred Heart of Jesus I - 1926
- Brazilian Religion I - 1927
- Manacá - 1927
- Pastoral - 1927
- The Doll - 1928
- The Sleep - 1928
- The Lake - 1928
- Calmness I - 1928
- Distance - 1928
- The Toad - 1928
- The Bull - 1928
- The Egg (Urutu) - 1928
- The Moon - 1928
- Abaporu - 1928
- Post Card - 1928
- Anthropophagy - 1929
- Calmness II - 1929
- City (The Street) - 1929
- Forest - 1929
- Setting Sun - 1929
- Idyll - 1929
- Distance - 1929
- Portrait of Father Bento - 1931
- Workers - 1933
- Second Class - 1933
- Children (Orphanage) - 1935/1949
- Seamstresses - 1936/1950
- Altar (Prayer) - 1939
- The Wedding - 1940
- Procession - 1941
- Earth - 1943
- Spring - 1946
- Stratosphere - 1947
- Beach - 1947
- Farm - 1950
- Port I - 1953
- Procession(Panel) - 1954
- Baptism of Macunaíma - 1956
- The Metropolis - 1958
- Passage III - 1965
- Port II - 1966
- Brazilian Religion IV - 1970