Tarsila do Amaral and Fernand Léger: the adoption of urban decolonial aesthetics

As the Brazilian modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) studies several times in Paris with European avant-garde artist Fernand Léger (1881-1955), it is often claimed that Amaral’s visual style tends to cubism. However, throughout Amaral’s career as a painter, she sought ways to distinguish herself and to break away from European dominance. She dedicated herself to painting the local Brazilian landscape aiming at the revaluation of Brazil’s cultural and social features. Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, urban life became a dominant topic among modernists. To embody the process of Brazil’s search for breaking away from European dominance, Oswald de Andrade excogitated the theory of Anthropophagy. The use of anthropophagy as a cultural metaphor is a way to visualize the process of the elimination of colonial domination. The present study is a visual analysis of paintings from Amaral and Léger which depict objects from urban life analyzed through the lens of the...Show moreAs the Brazilian modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) studies several times in Paris with European avant-garde artist Fernand Léger (1881-1955), it is often claimed that Amaral’s visual style tends to cubism. However, throughout Amaral’s career as a painter, she sought ways to distinguish herself and to break away from European dominance. She dedicated herself to painting the local Brazilian landscape aiming at the revaluation of Brazil’s cultural and social features. Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, urban life became a dominant topic among modernists. To embody the process of Brazil’s search for breaking away from European dominance, Oswald de Andrade excogitated the theory of Anthropophagy. The use of anthropophagy as a cultural metaphor is a way to visualize the process of the elimination of colonial domination. The present study is a visual analysis of paintings from Amaral and Léger which depict objects from urban life analyzed through the lens of the Anthropophagic theory. The research question is: How does Tarsila do Amaral adopt a decolonial aesthetic in relation to Fernand Léger in the representation of urban life?Show less

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Tarsila do Amaral and Fernand Léger: the adoption of urban decolonial aesthetics