Art lovers, mark your calendars! The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral, one of the central figures of Brazilian modernism, from mid-October 2024 to the end of January 2025. The exhibition offers a fascinating insight into the world of this prodigious artist, who was born in 1886 and died in 1973. A true pioneer, from the 1920s onwards Tarsila do Amaral created an original and evocative style, blending indigenous influences with modernizing trends, reflecting a Brazil in the throes of transformation.
Based between São Paulo and Paris,Tarsila was a key mediator between the avant-gardes of these two cultural metropolises. After sculpting a distinctly Brazilian iconographic universe in Paris, influenced by Cubism and Primitivism, she was instrumental in founding the "anthropophagic" movement in São Paulo in 1928. This movement, which took its name from the indigenous practice of cannibalism symbolizing the "devouring of the other" to assimilate its qualities, embodies the way in which Brazilians appropriated and reinterpreted foreign and colonial cultures.
Tarsila do Amaral's work, situated at the intersection of multiple cultures, does not fail to raise social, identity and racial questions. It invites us to rethink the boundaries between tradition and avant-garde, between cultural centers and peripheries, between learned and popular cultures. Although widely recognized and exhibited in Brazil, international exhibitions of her work have been rare. This retrospective aims to fill this gap, at a time when Brazil is gaining visibility in the critical and historiographical discourses of "globalized" art, and when the recognition of women artists in art history is becoming increasingly commonplace.
The Musée du Luxembourg retrospective covers Tarsila do Amaral 's rich output from the 1920s, the period of Brazilian modernism, the " Pau Brasil " movement (1924-1925) and " Anthropophagy " (1928-1929). Her works, oscillating between vividly colored landscapes and mysterious dreamlike visions, bear witness to an artist in constant evolution. Tarsila 's political and militant dimension is evident in her works of the 1930s, marked by social realism. The 1940s reveal a dreamlike gigantism, while her late compositions, with their almost abstract geometries, demonstrate her ability to continually reinvent her art right up to the 1960s. An opportunity to discover or rediscover a fundamental artist whose work, rooted in the culture of her time, remains astonishingly modern and original!
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Location
Musée du Luxembourg
19, rue de Vaugirard
75006 Paris 6
Access
RER B station "Luxembourg", line 4 station "Saint-Sulpice", line 12 station "Rennes".
Official website
museeduluxembourg.fr
More information
Open daily from 10.30am to 7pm. Nocturne Mondays until 10pm. Early closing at 6pm on December 24 and 31.
