Research the life of Brazilian Modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral. Describe one of her paintings. What objects do you see? What is the setting? What colors? What emotions do the figures seem to express? What aspects of Brazilian culture do you see represented?
Compare this painting to one by another painter from the same time period (Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dahli, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse, and many more!)
Try to include as many words as you can in Portuguese without using Google translate. The rest you can write in English.
Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral was a Brazilian painter, draftswoman, and translator. She is considered one of the leading Latin American modernist artists, and is regarded as the painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style.
One painting that stuck out to me was the postcard, the colors are so rich and I love this painting so much because it symbolizes anti-war. This painting was a response to the Spanish Civil War which makes it way more meaningful. This painting represented Brazilian culture because she said she will continue to paint and study campiras, our country side people.
The comparison I will make to the postcard painting would be Pablo Picasso painting of Guernica, which also represented anti-war, and the war he painted after was also the Spanish Civil War.
Some paintings that I liked by Tarsila are “O Vendedor de Frutas” e “Religião Brasileira”, na primeira pintura um homem na praia com frutas in a boat with a parrot. The colors I see are verde, azul, amarelo, and he looks cansado. In the second painting a sense of community is being shown which can be important in Brazilian culture, é uma pintura suave com cores pastéis.
Um pintura I found interesting is by Maria Izquierdo “Sueño y Presentimiento”, it has muitas cores escuras, azuis e marrons. And there is a lady in a casa holding her own head out the window with hair wrapped around tree branches, also depicted is religion by the crosses on the ground. As emoções na pintura são sombrias e tristes, and is the opposite of the pinturas done by Tarsila which are brilhante e mais colorido.
Tarsila do Amaral, uma artista moderna de grande importância. Eu amo, “A Lua” As cores são muito expressionista e simbólica. The colors here of green, blue and yellow indicate where she is from, São Paulo. They also convey this sense of “saudade” for the city. Not just the city of Sao Paulo but any city. The setting in the artwork is of a land where we see no people and no sign of them. (like a dream). If we look to compare Tarsila to Dali for example. We can see how Dali advocated for art as completely in dreams and therefore completely absurd and filled with motifs. Tarsila on the other hand lies in the middle because while her technique suggest certain formal qualities the world of her paintings exist between dreams and reality.
Tarsila do Amaral was a leading artist in the Brazilian modernist movement. Acknowledging her bourgeoise background, she was able to spend many of her formative years studying amongst famous French painters in Académie Julian, one of the most notable modern art schools in Paris. During her study abroad she found a liking to cubism which you can see in most of her pieces. Despite studying in France, most of her work enraptures life in Sao Paulo. In her piece, ”Workers” truly encapsulates the diversity within Brazil. The oil piece depicts the many faces and colors of the people of Brazil. The name ”Workers” interesting because this is a time of major industrialization in Brazil. Although we assume the lower-class workers might’ve been of darker complexions because of the intersection of colorism and classism, in this piece we come to find out that every walk of life worked amongst each other in this diverse city. It’s amazing seeing modernist art of this time depicting those of darker complexion as normal people rather than a fetishistic and exoticized portrays that were popular at the time.
Tarsila do Amaral was a Brazilian painter, draftswoman, and translator. She is considered one of the leading Latin American modernist artists and is regarded as the painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style.
one of Tarsila do Amaral’s paintings that caught my attention was “The Moon”, painted in 1928, and premiered in Paris. This painting shows a person staring at the moon and the moon is emphasized by being the biggest item in the painting, the setting is out in the mountains, and this painting seems to express peace and calmness.
Tarsila do Amaral foi uma pintora brasileria que teve muita infleuncia no desenvolvimento da arte moderna no brasil. Ela nasceu em 1886 e faleceu em 1973. Na pintura “Abaporu”, a obra e dominada por uma significativa figura alongada. The figure is laying against a landscape covered in cacti, with huge limbs and a little head. Instead of focusing on a realistic portrayal, the scene is kept simple to highlight the symbolic components. The earthy tones in the palette enhance the brilliant colors. The other artist we can sort of connect her to would be Salvador Dahli.