Tarsila do Amaral at the Musée du Luxembourg: Painting modern Brazil

Art lovers, mark your calendars! The Musée du Luxembourg invites you to discover an exhibition dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral, one of the central figures of Brazilian modernism, from October 9, 2024 to February 2, 2025. The exhibition invites you to immerse yourself in the world of this artist, who was born in 1886 and died in 1973. A true pioneer, Tarsila do Amaral created an original, evocative style from the 1920s onwards, blending indigenous influences and modernizing trends, reflecting a Brazil in the throes of transformation.

Tarsila, who lives between São Paulo and Paris, has been 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.

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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 " Anthropophagie " (1928-1929). Tarsila 's political and militant dimension is evident in his works of the 1930s, marked by social realism. The 1940s reveal a dreamlike gigantism, while his late compositions, with their almost abstract geometries, demonstrate his ability to continually reinvent his art until 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!