CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/25/2019

Tarsila do Amaral, cannibal of Modernism

There is so much to love about this new monograph on the underrecognized Brazilian Modernist Tarsila do Amaral, we hardly know where to begin. First, of course, is the title: Cannibalizing Modernism. Second, please note the tipped-on images on both front and back covers. Next, let us acknowledge the fact that the publisher, MASP, has printed on not one, but several very nice papers. There is also the fact that Tarsila, as the artist is known in her home country, dared to blend Parisian Modernism, as ingested during her years studying with André Lhote, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger, with "the art of our caipiras (people from the countryside)." Finally, there is the work itself. Colorful, weird, uninhibited, original, magical. Featured image is "Abaporu" (meaning, "the man who eats), painted in 1928 for the artist's husband, Oswald de Andrade, who was inspired by it to write the Manifesto of Anthropophagy, arguing for the supremacy of Brazilian art and culture specifically because it derived from the "cannibalism" of outside influences.