Tarsila do Amaral
A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) created an original and evocative body of work, drawing on the indigenous, popular and modern imaginations of a country in full transformation.
In Paris, in the 1920s, she put her iconographic universe to the test of cubism and primitivism, before initiating, in São Paulo, the “anthropophagic” movement, advocating the “devouring” by Brazilians of foreign and colonizing cultures, as a form of both assimilation and resistance.
His brightly coloured landscapes then give way to unusual and fascinating visions, before a more openly political dimension appears in his paintings from the 1930s. The dreamlike gigantism and almost abstract geometry of his latest compositions only confirm the power of a work anchored in its time and always ready to renew itself.
Filling a lack of recognition of the artist in Europe and presenting some new aspects of his work, this retrospective invites us to the heart of modern Brazil and its divisions between tradition and avant-garde, centers and peripheries, learned and popular cultures.
