Page 108 - ARTE!Brasileiros #38

ART AS RESISTANCE ENGLISH VERSION

RETROSPECTIVES ARE GOOD OCCASIONS to revisit her own works what she had discovered around her, revealing an
essential works. If such tributes are often only a reminder of interest by the works of characters the likes of Marquet, Vuillard,
the significance of certain artist or artwork, there are cases Bonnard and, evidently, Matisse, whose influence is clear in canvases
in which the celebratory event gives space for a broader and such as Interior de Mônaco (Interior of Monaco), from 1925. As
comprehensive new reading, adding new perspectives for summarized by Ana Paula Simioni on the exhibition catalogue,
analysis and fruition. This is the case, for instance, of Anita “more than responding to the requests and the agenda of her
Malfatti – 100 Anos de Arte Moderna (Anita Malfatti – 100 group of origin, Anita sought to trail a different path, based on
Years of Modern Art), on show at the Museu de Arte Moderna internationalism, temperate modernism, on the conversation with
de São Paulo (MAM-SP) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Western pictorial tradition.”
the painter’s polemic exhibition, which went on to become one This process also explains her late production, in which we see
of the inaugural landmarks of modernism in Brazil. With 70 the rise of her interest in popular themes, the simplification in the
works, the exhibition is not limited to this precise period. On construction of space, in clear synch with the growing national
the contrary, it surveys a rich overview of the artist’s output, interest in primitive art, what Regina Teixeira de Barros calls
unveiling her main choices and clearly opposing the official “deliberate simplicity” which, at the time, may supposedly have been
version, still echoed in classrooms, which reduces Anita to mistaken for yet another sign of the painter’s decay. If it appears to
some sort of martyr of the movement, a shiny but fleeting have been disturbing for the criticism of her time – characterized
star, who had let herself be affected by Monteiro Lobato’s by a more univocal and prevailing vision of modern art – to figure
incisive criticism, published on the occasion of Anita’s 1917 out how the same artist produces such disparate works like Vida
exhibition, revealing he had been shocked with the squintiness na Roça (Life in the Farm) and Farol (Lighthouse), we witness the
of the rebel schools such as expressionism, which she had consolidation, one hundred years later, of the idea that her refusal
supposedly adopted. to relentlessly disrupt the established standards (she often chose
The selection, the result of a year-long research by curator to understand and absorb them) does not make her, mandatorily, a
Regina Teixeira de Barros who looked into several public martyr, sacrificed for the sake of modernity. Anita was much more
and private collections in the country, focuses on the three than that, as the works currently on show attest.
greatest moments around which Anita’s painting is centered –
the avant-garde years, marked by her trips to the United States 1 | OPPOSITO, NU MASCULINO COM BASTÃO I (1917); TOP, GRUPO DOS CINCO (1922); BOTTOM,
and Germany, and by her 1914 and 1917 exhibitions, held in a A VIDA NA ROÇA (1956)
still peaceful and conservative São Paulo; her production of
the 1920s, lived partly in France and with a strong tendency to 2 | TROPICAL (1916), ANITA MALFATTI
a return to order and in synch with what was being produced
by the Paris school; and finally the 1940s and 1950s, marked Anita Malfatti: 100 anos
by a clear interest of the artist in primitive art, popular culture de Arte Moderna
and small-town festivities. “There’s always a new Anita,” Through April 30, 2017
claims Regina. “She never settles, she’s always reinventing Museu de Arte Moderna
herself,” she adds, reminding that modernism is not a one- Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral,
way street and even when she recovered the realist trends, Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, SP
seeking a dialogue between past and present, she revealed +55 11 5085-1318
herself a radical. The direct observation of the works and
painter’s own testimonies confirms this: “Now be brave, get EXHIBITION SÃO PAULO | PAGES 48 TO 50
ready, I’ll give you some bouleversant [shocking] news. I’m
classic now! As a futurist I’m dead and buried,” she writes to AVENIDA PAULISTA
Mário de Andrade in 1924.
production – landscapes and portraits. Very sober, the exhibition IN DISPUTE
The show emphasizes the two most powerful genres in Anita’s
layout puts iconic examples of her production side by side
with lesser-known works. It willingly avoids addressing the EXHIBITION ON SHOW AT MASP PRESENTS VIEWS FROM DIFFERENT
contentious topics surrounding her biography. And it goes ARTISTS ON THE HISTORY AND THE CONFLICTS SURROUNDING THE MAIN
further by attempting to shed light on the connections between
different groups of works, such as the powerful nuclei dedicated AVENUE IN THE CITY
to the nude studies and the lovely series of landscapes made
in Monhegan (USA). The poetic identifications between similar BY MARIANA TESSITORE
works are also worth mentioning, such as the dialog between
two portraits of women on a balcony – Chanson de Montmartre, OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, MASP looked on its past. Iconic
from 1926, and A Mulher do Pará (The Woman from Pará), exhibitions such as Playgrounds and Mão do Povo Brasileiro (The
from the following year – a theme that evidently refers to Hand of the Brazilian People) were reassembled; and the legacy of
Manet’s The Balcony, showing in practice how she was above Pietro Bardi and his wife, Lina Bo Bardi, redressed. The notorious
all a researcher of painting, who approached certain issues or glass easels designed by Lina, for instance, were again called into
aspects of painting with tenacity and resistance, both in regard the scene.
to the many possibilities of constructing the pictorial space This year, however, the museum decided to look upon its vicinity.
and the preeminence of color throughout her oeuvre, whether The theme for the first exhibition of 2017 is Avenida Paulista,
expressed by the sharp contrasts of her expressionist period, with all contradictions and conflicts the avenue – the museum’s
or by the lower tones used, for instance, in Retrato de A. M.G. address – bears.
(Portrait of A.M.G.). “This show brings about a disruption. We want to create new
It is possible to notice in several moments how the artist was things now that aren’t necessarily based on Lina’s projects and
attentive to the contemporary artists’ production, echoing in MASP’s trajectory itself,” argues Tomás Toledo, one of the show’s

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