Curator, Luis Perez-Oramas: Welcome to Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil. My name is Luis Perez-Oramas, former curator of Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition follows Tarsila as she moves back and forth between her native São Paulo, and Paris; and then travels throughout Brazil, exploring and discovering the poetic potential of her homeland. One of the most important painters in Brazilian history, Tarsila is widely known in Europe and in Latin America. This is the first show of her work in the U.S.
In this painting, Tarsila is bridging her training as a modern painter in Paris in the 1920s with her rediscovery of Brazil. A Cuca, which means “critter,” is a complete stylization of the natural exuberant landscape. In a letter to her daughter in 1924, Tarsila mentioned this painting.
Artist, Tarsila do Amaral (voiced by curator Karen Grimson): I am doing some very Brazilian paintings that have been greatly appreciated. I just finished one called *A Cuca. It is a strange animal in the forest with a frog, an armadillo, and an invented animal.
Luis Perez-Oramas: In this exhibition, you will accompany Tarsila from her early training as an avant-garde artist in Paris in the early 1920s, to her invention of a new form of figuration for Brazilian modern art.
