The Invention of the Brazilian Landscape
Her time away from Brazil offered Tarsila the chance to gain a new awareness of her origins. While she realized the exotic fascination that her tropical country aroused in her circle of friends in Paris, Cubism offered her a method of analysis and formal logic that allowed her to take ownership of her physical and mental landscape, leaving conventions and prejudices aside.
From 1924 on she set on “rediscovering” the ultra-dynamic city of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and its exuberant landscape, and the region of Minas Gerais, rich in colonial and baroque vestiges.
With her signature neat stroke that characterizes her drawing, Tarsila “dissects” these diverse landscapes with her pencil and ink, choosing the elements of an “authentic” Brazil and transcribing them in lines and geometric forms to bring her new visual vocabulary to life. Simple and modern, intelligible to the Brazilian and the international public, this language is expressed in paintings that present rigorous compositions, where motifs from very different sources coexist in harmony.