The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris hosts a Tarsila do Amaral retrospective, “Peindre le Brésil Moderne,” revisiting the work of a central figure of Brazilian modernism (to February 02, 2025). This exhibition (with around 150 works) is surprisingly her first retrospective in France. Until recently the artist— called the Brazilian Picasso— was rarely exhibited outside her home country.
Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) created an original, evocative body of work with brightly coloured landscapes and dreamlike compositions, drawing on a melange of modern and folk art aesthetics. The exhibition explores her prolific production of the 1920s, with its links to Brazilian modernism, and the “Pau Brasil” (1924-1925) and “Antropofagia” movements (1928—1929). She said “I invent everything in my painting. And I stylise whatever it was that I saw or felt.”
Tarsila moved to Paris in 1920 where she enrolled at the Académie Julian— the famous school of modern art— while simultaneously studying with French painters André Lhote, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger, who trained their students in Cubism. She affectionately referred to those studies as doing her “military service,” while searching for her own distinct Brazilian voice within modern art.
The exhibition (with paintings, photos and documents) is a wonderful update to the Paris modernist narrative and an opportunity to discover a remarkable Latin American female painter, who now —after 100 years!— is beginning to receive the global attention she deserves.
Tarsila do Amaral, “Peindre le Brésil Moderne,” Musée du Luxembourg, to February 02, 2025