Tarsila Do Amaral

Exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, October 9, 2024 - February 2, 2025

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 the throes of transformation.

In Paris in the 1920s, she put her iconographic universe to the test with cubism and primitivism, before initiating the "anthropophagic" movement in São Paulo, advocating the "devouring" by Brazilians of foreign and colonizing cultures, as a form of both assimilation and resistance.

His brightly colored landscapes gave way to unusual and fascinating visions, before a more overtly political dimension appeared in his paintings of the 1930s.

Through Tarsila's works, this exhibition catalog provides an insight into the cleavages between tradition and avant-garde, center and periphery, scholarly and popular culture in modern Brazil. The book fills a gap in recognition of the artist in Europe, and presents some previously unpublished aspects of his work.