Were academic critics unaware that Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral’s work contained allusions to historical Afro-Brazilian and indigenous aesthetics that critics superficially perceived as surrealist? Upon examining Amaral’s career, I noticed that this artist emphasized certain color schemes, figurational styles and technical aspects in her paintings to explore Afro-Brazilian and indigenous traditions and argue that academic critics in Brazil and Europe failed to understand the historical roots of her work. As Amaral emphasized, she renounced the academic “corrupt[ion]” that she experienced while undergoing formal training between 1916 and 1920 in São Paulo as well as in Parisian schools when she returned to the Brazilian metropolis from
