Page 95 - ARTE!Brasileiros #50

Marcos Amaro, curated by Aracy Amaral there is a sharpness, an impersonal clarity in decade old. At most - if we want to be generous
and Regina Teixeira de Barros these drawings that seem to me informed by - a few more years could be added, to add to
By TADEU CHIARELLI the photography and advertising image of the the corpus of his paintings “that count”, the
posters, a reference also present in Léger - so canvas Operários - his already battered, but
The perception that Tarsila do Amaral’s itinerary important for Tarsila. This characteristic can be definitive, swan song.
was quite peculiar becomes crystal clear in the seen, both in a work already done in 1923 - seen What happened with his production, from
face of the collection of his drawings, acquired from Venice - and in later productions, such as the early 1930s onwards was a gradual but
by the Marcos Amaro Foundation [1]. a landscape with a crane, from 1924 or a view fatal breakdown of the qualities that Tarsila
After all, of the 203 drawings belonging to from Piraeus, from 1926. had managed to bring together in his paintings
the institution, only seven were produced after The importance of the Collection lies precisely and drawings from the previous decade.
1930, and the artist, who died in 1973, produced in these possibilities for a more complex From Operários onwards, there were only
until 1970 [2]! In other words: from a journey understanding of Tarsila’s journey. The self- ever unsuccessful attempts to revive his
that started “officially” in 1923, only the first portrait, produced in 1923, for example. This “anthropophagic” (see some of his paintings
years are there royally contemplated, and the drawing is emblematic of the artist’s ability to from the 1940s) and “pau-brasil” phases (on
next almost forty years are practically outside move (or oscillate?) Between the search for which Tarsila will practically insist until his death),
the Collection. an unprecedented spelling (the result of the interspersed with paintings in which , sometimes
What would have happened to Tarsila’s miscegenation of heterodox procedures) - the flirted with Portinaresque social realism, now
production in the 1930s? Would it have followed case of the landscapes mentioned above - and with a certain primitivism, or else with a frank
the same pattern as the work of the previous the ratification of the values of traditional “good conservative, “academic” appeal.

decade, or did it move towards some kind of drawing”, although informed, of course, by There are justifications for this dissolution:
derailment, towards some final disaster? certain modernist lessons (conventional, but from the 1930s onwards, Tarsila would not have
It is known that the drawings that make up the still modernist) [4]. been as encouraged as at first, in which her
Collection today were chosen by Aracy Amaral Another important set in this context is that painting had the support of some of the most
for the artist’s retrospective at the Museum of non-figurative studies produced by her in important names in Modernism; after that date,
of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, in 1969. The 1923 and 1925. Did Tarsila take any of them to deprived of its former affluent financial situation,
discreet presence of drawings made after 1930 the screen? I do not think so. The support of it would have produced what it produced
may have had two reasons: Tarsila perhaps had Brazilian critics had clear limits and for Mario because, after all, it needed to work to survive
not kept works from that period or - which seems de Andrade, for example, no Brazilian artist and so on. Many other allegations could be
more likely - Aracy may have chosen, correctly, should “fall into” abstraction [5]. Perhaps this raised here to explain its failure, but whatever
to exhibit only what he considered to be the type of criticism has curbed Tarsila’s interest in the mitigating factors, the fact is that none of
best that the artist had produced. carrying out this type of production. However, them will be found outside the direction that the
Published in the exhibition catalog, both in the painting projects are there in the Collection, artist gave to the chain of her work. After 1930,
text by Aracy herself and in Regina Teixeira de waiting for someone to face them as frustrated it is noted that Tarsila simply failed to maintain
Barros, it can be seen how much the production ideas / projects still in the bud. the relevance of its previous phases, and not
of Tarsila’s last decades of activity constrains *** even the several resumes of these phases were
scholars, who lament - not without reason, These questions raised above from this able to revive its old vigor, because they were
as will be seen - that the productions of the collection of works by Tarsila are just some weak revisions, without any self-confidence.
artist of that period barely compare, in terms of a much larger and more potent set, in the Anita Malfatti also suffered a similar process,
of quality and vigor, to those of the early years. sense of a more acute knowledge of the artist’s but with important differences. Although many
It is as if Tarsila’s melancholic end as an artist production during the 1920s. However, the attest that, after 1917, she would no longer reach
contaminates the end of the reflections of the question would be: what do we have left of Tarsila, the power that preceded the exhibitions she
two specialists [3]. besides this rich production from the beginning made that year, it is important to remember that
These findings again reveal a problem that of his career? Now, in my view, there is nothing at the end of that decade and until the 1930s,
haunts everyone who looks at the trajectory of left for us, but what the artist produced during Anita fought to redirect her poetics to distant
Tarsila do Amaral: what would have happened that short period of more or less a decade, is directions from the historical avant-garde.
with his production from the 1930s that caused worth an entire work. (with whom he had flirted between 1910 and
him to lose the vigor so characteristic that he Circumscribing Tarsila’s work between 1916/17), joining the return to the international
demonstrated in his early works ? Therefore, 1923 and, more or less, 1933, does not mean order, which attracted several supporters in
based on the premises that emerged with the wanting to instrumentalize his production so Brazil. Anita’s “sin” was not to have aligned
Collection acquired by the Marcos Amaro that it may well serve the dictates of a modernist her realistic and synthetic production of the
Foundation as a starting point and the texts historiography that has long since entered the return to order, to the nationalist theme, so
written by the curators, the purpose of this years. It is about marking the objective (and dear to the Brazilian intellectual milieu at the
text is to call attention to some of the works immense, in fact) limits of his contribution time. Regardless of those who marginalized it
considered most significant now belonging to art produced in Brazil, without worrying since 1917, it is necessary to affirm that Malfatti
to the institution and, finally, to raise some about issues outside the work of art and its remained faithful to the new directions thought
considerations that may contribute to the specificities. It is clear that his productions, for his production, constituting a work that -
fact that, in fact, a direct confrontation of this after Operários (1933), can be understood as regardless of whether we like it or not - has its
problem begins that constrains everyone. “historical documents”, becoming fundamental coherence there.
*** for historians and sociologists, or for art This did not happen with Tarsila. It is
To get in touch with these drawings by historians concerned more with the life and interesting to pay attention to the succession
Tarsila is to dive into some of the artist’s most surroundings of the artists, than with their of phases that it went through, from 1923 to
compelling productions, since her initiation with productions, in fact. However, they should the beginning of the following decade, joining
Pedro Alexandrino, in the late 1910s. The first are not be considered as works of art within the opposing strands within the framework of the
delicate, where she notes people lost in vague same standards of their production in the 1920s. international avant-garde of the 1920s. Let’s see:
moments of everyday life. His trait is subtle, Trying to relativize the immense distance that from the “pau-brasil” phase, charming - and who
almost embarrassed for approaching a tradition separates these two groups of productions, knew how to respond to the demands for modern
in which he still does not feel fully integrated. from an artistic and aesthetic point of view, can Brazilian art, receiving a positive reception
A few years later, however, the characteristic result in curious biographies, as well as in good from critics -, Tarsila launched herself into the
shyness of many newbies seems to be gone. financial deals, but it will hardly be enough that, anthropophagic phase, in which she supposedly
What a delicious Venice is that, captured by in a comparison between a work from the 1920s forgot the rigorous analytical dimension of her
Tarsila, as if she were sliding on a gondola? A and another one from the 1950s, for example - first phase to immerse herself in the teachings of
drawing that, before faithfully registering the even if both “brazilwood” both - the differences metaphysical painting by Chirico and surrealism.
place, attests to how the artist already realized do not stand out in an overwhelming way. Now, between the brazilwood painting and the
the importance of two-dimensional support The differences between the most important anthropophagic painting there is a considerable
and the power of the lines on it. years of Tarsila’s career (between 1923 and gap. While the first emphasizes the need for logic
Many say that the most incisive drawing 1930) and the plummeting of her attitude and reason to start the work of art, the second
that Tarsila has practiced since 1923 would towards modern painting (started with her bets on the irrational, on the underground of
be linked to a taste for “primitive” art, which “social” phase, from the early 1930s) are so personal and collective memory to articulate.
interested many in those years. I believe that great, but so immense , that it is even possible Fortunately, Tarsila was able to jump between
this parameter was important for her. However, to state that his work, in fact, is less than a sides of modern art without changing the quality

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