Page 104 - ARTE!Brasileiros #59

ENGLISH VERSION REACTIVATING ATTENTION

economic debacle, and immigrants like the painter in Barcelona between 1892 and 1920, and in Paris 1919 – The “discovery” of Victor Brecheret by
Emílio Pettoruti, considered one of the founders from 1926 to 1932, in addition to his protagonism in Menotti Del Picchia, Helios Seelinger and
of Argentine modernism. In her autobiography A Montevideo. Inevitably, artists on the move come others;
Painter Before the Mirror,the artist reveals that he into contact with other local groups that influence 1920 – The sculptor’s first model for the Monument
always wanted to know the land of his ancestors, their work. Torres-García arrives in New York in 1920, to the flags;
and so he goes to Italy, where he lives in Florence, where he stays for two years. The impact that the 1922 – Between the 13th and 17th of February, the
Rome and Milan, he has contact with the futurists most modern and dynamic city of the time had on Modern Art Week, with an exhibition at the
Carlo Carrà and Giacomo Balla. Inspired by the his work is visceral, as he recounts in his book New Municipal Theater of São Paulo, “presenting”
Commedia dell’Arte Italiana, he paints harlequins York . Delighted with what he sees, he registers to the public works by Malfatti, Brecheret
and dedicates part of his life to still lifes. Before luminous signs, advertisements, red, yellow, gray and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, among others.

returning to Buenos Aires, he exhibits in Berlin, houses, floating letters on the screens. It is the The exhibition – like the entire event – would
at the Der Sturm gallery, and lives in Paris for six radical moment of his production that overflows have been met with scandal;
months. When he returns to Argentina, Pettoruti and is notable for its unique dynamics. 1924 – Pau-Brasil Manifesto;
influences artists and teaches the public to see Modernism feeds antagonistic forces between 1924 – Tarsila’s first solo exhibition in Paris;
territories still unexplored at that time. In 1971, the updating and internalizing, between rupture and 1928 – Launch of the Anthropophagic Movement
year of his death, he was honored with a special continuity. Cuban Wifredo Lam, like Torres- in São Paulo;
room at the 11th International Biennial of São Paulo. García and Rivera, employ Afro rituals and myths 1929 – Tarsila’s first solo exhibition in Brazil (Rio
For the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the process to create dynamic modernism. Rita Eder, an art de Janeiro);
of modernity in Latin American countries must historian, notes that Lam relates to Breton and Frida 1932 – Creation of the Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna
be seen as both open and closed areas; for the Kahlo by reaffirming the power of pre-Columbian and the Clube dos Artistas Modernos, in
Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, as peoples, cosmologies on the one hand and Africa on the São Paulo.
new peoples, transplanted peoples. Or simply, as other. Modernist discoveries and experiments, It would be possible to continue adding dates to
Aracy Amaral theorizes, based on the recognition especially in Latin America, are ways for artists this list until, in a kind of apotheosis, we find the
of the existence of two Latin Americas: that of the to reaffirm a new way of seeing, which the rest of creation of art museums in the city of São Paulo, the
Mexican, Mayan and Andean ancestral areas and, society cannot understand. Masp, in 1947 and the MaM-sp, in 1948, after which
on the other hand, the one lacking a solid remote we could add 1951, date of the inauguration of the
culture, such as the countries of the Atlantis area, ARTICLE MODERNISM IN SÃO PAULO [pages 82 to 89] I International Biennial of the Museum of Modern
in particular Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina Art of São Paulo .
[1]
and part of Chile. ANTHROPOPHAGY If in the history of modernist literature the
Decades before modernism, art theory was supremacy of modernism has been questioned
something that enriched conversations about VERSUS MODERNISM many times, in the case of the visual arts it has
cultural issues, but at its height it is a necessity. In the contrast between the two movements, crystallized for decades as a narrative born from a
In Mexico in the 1920s, artists tried to discover the it is important to recover the debate around purely individual concern - read Anita Malfatti -, until it
national and individual being. Muralism and graphics the visual arts and the memory of Oswaldo became a collective need and action – the creation of
adhere to the national project of revolutionary Costa, an important critic of culture and art art museums in São Paulo. This triumphant account
claims that are slowly becoming institutionalized. in the second half of the 1920s, in São Paulo had an architect: the intellectual Paulo Mendes
Jorge Schwartz, in his book Vanguardas Latino- de Almeida, author of the work From Anita to the
Americanas, recalls that, while Oswald de by taDeu cHiareLLi Museum which, before being released in book form,
Andrade dreams of the Pindorama matriarchy, a was published as a series of articles in the São Paulo
Mexican group has as its utopia the foundation of it is possible to iMagine how much has been press during the 1950s .
[2]
Estridentópolis, a dream born of an avant-garde written about São Paulo’s modernism since 1922. An Of course From Anita to the Museum was not the
artistic movement, stridentism, which appears in incalculable number of newspaper and magazine only element that contributed to the construction
Jalapa, Veracruz, in 1921. articles, memoirs, books, dissertations and theses, of this vision – now naturalized – that, in the field
Not a dreamer, the Mexican Diego Rivera as well as exhibitions, catalogs, lectures and courses. of visual arts, modernism would have developed
emphasizes the social and political issues with It is precisely this set of reflections that made São without cracks. Although I consider that Almeida’s
which he is committed. He marries Frida Kahlo Paulo modernism – and its crucial point, the 1922 book became the backbone of this process of
around the time he intensifies the murals with Modern Art Week – over time become a myth, a mythologizing modernism, other factors also
themes that reflect the world around them. He symbol of the renewal of Brazilian art and culture, contributed to the construction of the myth.
travels to Paris and there he meets intellectuals a continuous process of renewal. . Thus, it would be interesting to pay attention to
like Breton and Picasso, who are interested in his However, if much has been written about the certain moments of that ideal history of modernism
work. Desmond Rochfort, in his book Mexican Mural importance (or not) of the Modern Art Week and about in which it collided with concrete situations that –
Painting ,understands that in the years in which the effects of modernism on the field of literature in if they had been taken into account – would have
Rivera paints his version of the history of Mexico, the country, it seems to me that the issue of visual removed any possibility of thinking that the visual
the enigma to be solved is that of the Mexican nation arts was less problematized. arts, from Anita to the museums, developed in São
at the moment when the Revolution is in power. For I do not want to say that, compared to the role of São Paulo without cracks, in a cohesive process, well
the critic, the visions of the modern world created Paulo modernism in literature, there are fewer studies articulated and never interrupted.
by the three great muralists: Rivera, Orozco and in the field of visual arts. This may actually be the case, Perhaps the fact that most compromises this
Siqueiros, between 1930 and 1940, are situated in but that’s not exactly the problem. What is important idealized vision is still lost in some obscure publication
the context of contrasting realities. “For Siqueiros, to underline is: if the history of literary modernism in or in a poorly publicized memoir, or even in a diary
they constituted the basis of a profoundly partial São Paulo is full of analyzes that re-elaborate or put forgotten in any drawer. However, it is almost
reading of the modern world. In the case of Orozco, into perspective the most canonical views that were unbelievable that one of the main testimonies of splits
the contrasts create an evaluative interrogation of built on the phenomenon, the same does not occur within São Paulo’s modernism is documented in one
the conflict between the ideal and reality. In Rivera’s with the visual arts. The narrative created about them of the most important publications of the period, the
work, the dualities of the modern world are treated is appeased, its presuppositions already naturalized. Anthropophagy Journal, launched in São Paulo in 1928
with a combination of contradictory positions, We study Anita Malfatti, we study Candido Portinari, and circulated until the middle of the following year.
whether in an uncritical and mythologized view of among others, but there are few studies that discuss In fact, no one seems to have paid due attention
American modernity or through the rhetoric of its what is conventionally understood about São Paulo to what that publication demonstrates in relation to
revolutionary socialism. At the beginning of the modernism in the visual arts. the visual arts in São Paulo during the 1920s.
20th century, when the Mural Painting Movement “Antropofagia”, Tarsila do Amaral, 1929. Photo: It was on the pages of Anthropophagy Journal
appeared, Muralism places as a central point the Isabella Matheus / José and Paulina Nemirovsky in which an article divided into five parts by the
elaboration of a new history that includes the people Foundation collection on loan to the Pinacoteca intellectual Oswaldo Costa was published.
as the main actor, as an ethnicity and class. The de São Paulo
movement has a pedagogical bias, since a large But, after all, what is conventionally understood ***
part of the population is illiterate. as modernism in the visual arts? Suppressing some Today a name practically forgotten in the cultural
Uruguay contributes to the movement with a truly events that are also considered important, as noted: debate, Oswaldo Costa was one of the important
international artist, Joaquin Torres-García, who 1917 – Malfatti’s exhibition in São Paulo and Monteiro professionals of cultural and art criticism in the
plays an active role both in the modernist movement Lobato’s criticism “against” the artist; second half of the 1920s, in São Paulo.
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