Introduction
When examining the works of Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973), can viewers glean that she transcended traditional figurativism in her paintings? Did her work illustrate the social dynamism of a growing Brazil? After investigating Tarsila’s aesthetic choices to experiment with color and geometry, which characterized her style of topographic surrealism, her audiences may discern that she opted to deviate from Eurocentric precepts as painting evolved in early-to-mid 20th century Brazil. In her pieces, she altered spatial traditions by critically adapting foreign compositional conventions to autochthonous spiritual foundations.
Simply, Brazilian painting could not develop if it did not acknowledge other European and non-Western …show more content…
In her youth, Tarsila “grew up on the family fazenda [mansion on a large and prosperous farm] and attended colégios [secondary schools] in Santana, São Paulo, and Barcelona.” Far from spending her formative years in a favela, this artist lived in a comfortable, rural environment, and attended upper-class academies in Brazil and Europe. Therefore, audiences should not assume she painted Carnaval and Operários because she experienced poverty or racial discrimination first-hand. After divorcing André Teixeira Pinto and studying artistic techniques in Paris, Tarsila returned to Brazil with skepticism towards the academic formalist school of painting. Together with her friends Anita Malfatti and soon-to-be husband Oswald de Andrade, she joined the modernist “Group of Five” in São Paulo, widely considered the center of modern art in 1920s Brazil. However, since she could not stand to stay in one location for a prolonged period, Tarsila and de Andrade escaped to Paris, where he convinced her to incorporate a mixture of local and global cultures into her work and, in 1925, marry him. Thus, Tarsila’s audiences can see that she decided to renounce her prim childhood and explore cross-cultural color and composition to radically portray Brazil’s social
When examining the works of Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973), can viewers glean that she transcended traditional figurativism in her paintings? Did her work illustrate the social dynamism of a growing Brazil? After investigating Tarsila’s aesthetic choices to experiment with color and geometry, which characterized her style of topographic surrealism, her audiences may discern that she opted to deviate from Eurocentric precepts as painting evolved in early-to-mid 20th century Brazil. In her pieces, she altered spatial traditions by critically adapting foreign compositional conventions to autochthonous spiritual foundations.
Simply, Brazilian painting could not develop if it did not acknowledge other European and non-Western …show more content…
In her youth, Tarsila “grew up on the family fazenda [mansion on a large and prosperous farm] and attended colégios [secondary schools] in Santana, São Paulo, and Barcelona.” Far from spending her formative years in a favela, this artist lived in a comfortable, rural environment, and attended upper-class academies in Brazil and Europe. Therefore, audiences should not assume she painted Carnaval and Operários because she experienced poverty or racial discrimination first-hand. After divorcing André Teixeira Pinto and studying artistic techniques in Paris, Tarsila returned to Brazil with skepticism towards the academic formalist school of painting. Together with her friends Anita Malfatti and soon-to-be husband Oswald de Andrade, she joined the modernist “Group of Five” in São Paulo, widely considered the center of modern art in 1920s Brazil. However, since she could not stand to stay in one location for a prolonged period, Tarsila and de Andrade escaped to Paris, where he convinced her to incorporate a mixture of local and global cultures into her work and, in 1925, marry him. Thus, Tarsila’s audiences can see that she decided to renounce her prim childhood and explore cross-cultural color and composition to radically portray Brazil’s social