Page 94 - ARTE!Brasileiros #46

THE PLACE OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
TENTACULAR, PAUL KLEE EXHIBITION at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) of São at the same time humans and supernaturals, fallen and beautiful. There is for
Paulo, presents a diversified portrait of the artist, allowing the expression of all example Angel Forgotten (1939), whose delicacy and modesty – with the hands
his geniality. Of course, his role in modern art and his personal style – in dialogue and wings together – is touching. Is also present in the selection, which after São
with several of the hegemonic currents of the first half of the 20th century – are Paulo follows for units of the institution in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte,
the basis of the exhibition, which features over 120 works. However, the highest the most celebrated angel of Klee, Angelus Novus, (1920), entering history as the
quality of Equilibrio Instável (Unstable Equilibrium) lies in the strategy of show emblematic image of the theses on the concept of history of Walter Benjamin.
not a single and coherent trajectory of the painter, but rather illuminate different Purchased by Benjamin in 1921, the work belongs to the Israel Museum and rarely
aspects of his life and his work, composing a panorama - evidently not exhaustive travels, but the Zentrum Paul Klee made for the exhibition a faithful and certified
– of the multiple issues that Klee and his time holds dear. copy that, according to the German philosopher, works as an allegory of the story,
So, what could be a traditional retrospective that countersigns the official which see with horror the destruction of the past while being propelled into the
narrative about the trajectory of an artist deeply coherent and prolific, spreads future by this storm that “we call progress”.
by research, themes, techniques and different times. This approach by chapters, The “confluence of the connection between a worldview and the pure plastic
which respect a tenuous chronology, also answers to the difficult architecture of exercise”, as defined by the artist himself, meets its synthetic expression in works
the space, fragmented into multiple rooms disconnected from one another. With such as Crossed Off the List. The screen, painted in 1933 brings the image of a
this, the visitor follows the artist since childhood, on a set of simple drawings, man, quite possibly a self-portrait, a man profiled, sad face, with a cross over
representing, for example, family Christmas scenes. The presence of such pieces his head and the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Klee always attempted
in the exhibition can be explained by both the importance of the Zentrum Paul to unite creative relations, content and form, with existential issues, ideological,
Klee (a Swiss institution organizing the show and depository of his work) for ethical,” synthesises Fabienne Eggelhöfer, curator, reiterating the idea of balance
the preservation of his story, and the curious fact of the painter himself have expressed in the title.
included these work, that at his discretion would already presents “productive
autonomy”, in comprehensive record that kept the entire life of his production.
The visitor will little by little accompanying his walk, and witnesses through EXHIBITION_SÃO PAULO | PAGES 66 TO 70
body (which had already cost him a spot at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in THE AFFECTIVE RIGOR OF
selected works his desire to improve himself in the academic study of the human
1898) and the subsequent liberation of an art that only reproduce the visible; the FARNESE, IN ITS ENTIRETY
interesting studies that performs in the first decade of the 20th century, receiving
the title of “Inventions”, in which creates strange figures, early surreal, with some EXHIBITION REVISITS THE GRAPHIC AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL WORK OF
irony and acidity; the importance of travel such as those made for Italy (1901), THE MINAS GERAIS ARTIST, TRYING TO UNDERSTAND ITS GENESIS AND
France (1912) and particularly to Tunisia (1914); the presence of the family (in the REPOSITIONING ITS IMPORTANCE IN THE HISTORY OF BRAZILIAN ART
pictures and the puppets made for his son); the discovery of color; and the intense
relationship with other forms of artistic expression such as music and theater. BY MARIA HIRSZMAN
The movements are complementary, combining importante biographical facts
with its main veins of research and study, such as the works of more expressionist THERE IS NO FIXED POINT FROM WHICH TO LOOK at the work of Farnese de Andrade. His
bias, developed in the years 1910 (when participated in the Der Blaue Reiter group, work, now reviewed on display at Almeida and Dale Gallery, not only contains a
with artists such as Kandinsky and Macke) or the persistent drawings of geometric unique plastic and symbolic power, but also makes the history of Brazilian art
models that performs in several years that he was a professor at the Bauhaus, more complex and interesting. Serving as a counterpoint to the official narrative,
period in which devotes itself to understand and synthesize the formal relations which sweeps under the rug any expression that escapes the idea of an abstract
of plastic representation. Sometimes the visitor is placed in contact with works vocation in mid-twentieth-century Brazil, Farnese’s art deals with interdicts,
that mark his relationship with the world around, and in other faces the result of phantoms, and archetypes, and brings out an uncomfortable subjectivity. As
a constant effort to dominate and create a new art. Disciplined to the extreme, Denise Mattar, who is responsible for the selection of the almost 100 pieces in
Klee was by standard does not pass a day without trace a line. the show, his works “frolic in the bowels of the unconscious, and so fascinate,
Despite the importance normally attributed to the artist’s contribution to the enchant, frighten and disturb.”
development of abstraction in modern art, few were the opportunities of the Dense, the exhibition spans a wide range of research and moments of the artist’s
brazilian public to get a closer look at his production, as shows Roberta Saraiva production. It seeks to illuminate the importance of its graphic production, little
Coutinho in a study published in the catalog of Unstable Balance .Such absence seen in the last decades but fundamental in its trajectory. For most of his career,
is even more strange if we take into account the major influence – formal or Farnese was more valued as an illustrator and engraver, and it was not until the
theoretical — of their research in local modernism, at a distance dialog that 1990s, and especially in the 21st century, that his three-dimensional production
Zentrum Paul Klee aims to map better and present in the future to the swiss public. acquired an undeniable prominence, overshadowing other forms of expression.
The exhibition mostly account with drawings (80% of his production is composed And yet, such a valuation was not enough to get him out of the way. It is curious
of works on paper), among which we can highlight a striking image group, outlined that, despite being considered one of the most fertile Brazilian artists and has
quickly in the heat, in which he comments with acidity the tragic events leading up been revisited in several exhibitions, studies and publications (with emphasis on
to World War II. These almost caricatures, in chalk on cardboard, show scenes as the encouraged book edited by Cosac Naify in 2002), it has been kept in the shade
the repulsive figure of the dictator or the horrors experienced by immigrants, by when it comes to recount the history of Brazilian art, being unjustly absent from
persecuted by Hitler’s regime and that are part of a set of about 250 illustrations. important historical reviews, such as the 24th São Paulo Biennial, for example.
Klee himself was victim of Nazism. In addition to have his works included in the Such forgetfulness is often explained by the fact that his work presents a certain
exhibition of “degenerate art” organized by the Reich in 1937, he was appointed mismatch in relation to what was done hegemonically in his period of performance.
as a Jew, had his house searched, lost his job and was forced to take refuge in He faced what Denise Mattar defines as “dictatorship of abstraction” and a
Switzerland, his country of birth, in 1933 vigorous resistance to forms of expression more linked to a figuration close to
Another group of works that deserves attention is the set of drawings of angels, Expressionism and Surrealism. What supposedly brings him closer to authors

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