Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil
02.21.2025 - 06.01.2025
A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (also known as Tarsila) created an original, evocative body of work, drawing on indigenous and popular imagery and on modernizing forces of a rapidly-transforming country.
In the 1920s, moving between São Paulo and Paris, Tarsila ferried between the avant-gardes of these two cultural capitals. Having constructed a “Brazilian” iconographic world, put to the test by the Cubism and Primitivism so in vogue in the French capital at the time, her painting was the root of the Pau-Brasil and Anthropophagic movements, whose search for an “authentic,” multicultural, and multiracial Brazil aimed to refound the country’s relationship with the European “centers” of colonization.
The activist dimension of Tarsila’s paintings from the 1930s and their ability to accompany the profound transformations of her social and urban environment until the 1960s confirm the strength of an oeuvre attuned to her time, always willing to reinvent itself, despite the unstable conditions of the different times and contexts that an emancipated, independent woman artist had to face.
With her invitation to delve into a Brazilian modernity that she contributed to forging even more than she painted it, Tarsila reveals in her production all the complexity of this concept always subject to debate, which raises identity and societal questions of great importance even today, both in Brazil and Europe.
This exhibition is organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and le GrandPalaisRmn
Galleries: 201, 202, 203
Curators: Cecilia Braschi and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães
Venues: Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Tarsila do Amaral
Postcard (Cartão postal), 1929
Oil on canvas, 127.5 x 142.5 cm
Private collection, Rio de Janeiro
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: Jaime Acioli
The Exhibition
Tarsila do Amaral
Study (Academy no. 2) [Estudo (Academia nº 2)], 1923
Oil on canvas
61 × 50 cm
Private Collection. Courtesy: Almeida & Dale
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Sergio Guerini
Tarsila do Amaral
The Doll (A Boneca), 1928
Oil on canvas
60 x 45 cm
Hecilda and Sergio Fadel Collection, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Romulo Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Self-portrait (Manteau Rouge ) [Auto-retrato (Manteau Rouge)], 1923
Oil on canvas
73 × 60.5 cm
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes / Ibram, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram, Rio de Janeiro / Jaime Acioli
Tarsila do Amaral
Self-portrait I (Auto-retrato I), 1924
Oil on cardboard on chipboard panel
41 x 37 cm
Acervo Artístico-Cultural dos Palácios do Governo do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: ©Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces of the State of São Paulo / Romulo Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Palm Trees (Palmeiras), 1925
Oil on canvas
87 × 74.5 cm
Colección Evelyn e Ivoncy Ioschpe, en depósito en
la Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Sergio Guerini
Tarsila do Amaral
Untitled, project for an illustration,
for Blaise Cendrar's Travel Notes, ca. 1924
Ink on paper
26.6 × 20.3 cm
Bibliothèque nationale suisse, archives littéraires suisses, Berna,
fonds Blaise Cendrars
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: Gunter Lepkowski, Berlín
Tarsila do Amaral
Carnival in Madureira (Carnaval em Madureira), 1924
Oil on canvas
76 x 63.5 cm
Fundação José e Paulina Nemirovsky, on loan to Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Pinacoteca de São Paulo / Isabella Matheus
Tarsila do Amaral
Fruit seller (O Vendedor de Frutas), 1925
Oil on canvas
108 x 84.5 cm
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM Rio de Janeiro / Romulo Fialdini & Valentino Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Urutu, 1928
Oil on canvas
60.5 x 72.5 cm
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM Rio de Janeiro / Romulo Fialdini et Valentino Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Distance (Distância), 1928
Oil on canvas
65.5 x 75 cm
Fundação José e Paulina Nemirovsky, on loan to Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Pinacoteca de São Paulo / Isabella Matheus
Tarsila do Amaral
Workers (Operários), 1933
Oil on canvas
150 x 205 cm
Acervo Artístico-Cultural dos Palácios do Governo do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces of the State of São Paulo / Romulo Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Seamstresses (Costureiras), 1950
Oil on canvas
73.3 × 100.2 cm
Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, gifted by Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, inv. 1963.1.243
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Romulo Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
Village with Bridge and Papaya Tree (Vilarejo com ponte e mamoeiro), 1953
Oil on canvas
41 x 52 cm
Private collection
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Romulo Fialdini
Tarsila do Amaral
The Metropolis (A Metrópole), 1958
Oil on canvas
88 × 109 cm
Colección Maria Bernadette Ortiz Nascimento, São Paulo
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: © Marcelo Spatafora
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Tarsila do Amaral
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