PORTINARI
Portinari was born in an little town called Brodowski, in the state of São Paulo, on December 13, 1903. He was the second out of 12 children from a family of Italian immigrants from Florence—the capital of Renaissance art—that had gone to Brazil to work on the coffee plantations.
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Even if nationally recognized, Portinari has been the center of inflamed criticism about the true artistic value of his work. Accused by many of having developed an art that is merely an interpretation of Picasso's cubism and that therefore lacks in originality, this revisionist exhibit served to reignite the debate over the modern character of his work.
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Portinari however has always provoked some polemic. Communist, he was the one who painted the portrait of then dictator Getúlio Vargas, which rendered him the fame of official artist of the Vargas regime. A self-declared atheist, Portinari painted more saints than maybe his party comrades would have approved, fact that could be explained by looking at his own ethnical roots. Son of Italian immigrants from Florence, known as the cradle of renaissance art, his artistic formation may very well have been heavily influenced by Catholicism and the religious Italian art tradition or maybe simply his own passion for his art did not allow him to limit his themes.
But in the view of art critic Rodrigo Naves, as expressed in an article for magazine Veja, Portinari has a sentimental style that tried to appeal to "socially innocuous" emotions, used with the specific purpose of attaining recognition.
"When confronted with these works it is practically impossible to avoid a response of a sentimental order. They provoke, in a irremediable manner, piety, indignation, sadness, desolation and revolt," declared Naves.
Art historian Annateresa Fabris said in an interview published by the Estado de São Paulo that his paintings contrasted with the ideology of the authoritarian government of that time and according to her "this contrast can be seen by the presence of blacks in his paintings, in a moment when blacks were accused of many evils."
Picasso's influence in his work is for many a natural response, because Picasso was the great neoclassic model to be followed. Portinari was therefore modern under the limitations of a Brazilian reality that did not synchronize with the European movements.
Art coordinator Fernando Cocchiarale explained in an interview to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo that Portinari's modernism is according to him "a modernism of return to the order, through the reutilization of the perspective, of volume affirmation and the use of all the surface of the canvas. Portinari resisted a plastic renovation and provoked a delay in the development of Brazilian art." Nevertheless he recognizes his importance as modern, according to the conservative limits in vigor in the Brazilian society of that time.
Portinari lived in fact trying to conciliate the contradiction of being man of leftist ideas, who could nevertheless fit into the totalitarian regime of the government of Getúlio Vargas. For many , like the curator of São Paulo's Modern Art Museum (MAM), his avant-garde was one of return to order, extremely conciliated and symbolizing of the authoritarianism of the government.
Portinari's work also won't appear in the next São Paulo Bienal according to its curator Paulo Herkenkoff. In his view, Portinari "did not develop a cultural practice but a strategy of power... What has been done up to this point wasn't a revision of his production but a revision of the myth created around the artist," he said in an interview to the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
Portinari's Line
Besides all the dispute, Portinari, who produced more that 4500 canvas, remains with an immense popularity even though his art was scarcely present in the quotidian of most Brazilians. Based maybe on the simple recognition of this fact, the Portinari Licenciamentos, managed by the economist Dora Kauffman, is launching products inspired on his work that vary from stationary articles and children's games to decorated china and jewels.
The licensing of a plastic artist brand name is new in Brazil and Kauffman affirms that she did an intense research in other countries before she started working on this project in Brazil. "We are doing a rigorous selection of commercial partners to guarantee the high quality of products and maximum fidelity to the characteristics of Portinari's color and style in the licensed objects," affirmed Kauffman in an interview to O Estado.
The products are carefully finished and aim a public of higher acquisitive power. According to Kauffman, to each product there was a detailed study to avoid a vulgarization of Portinari's work. Some products like lingerie and sleepwear will not use the brand name, for example. Instead, the company made deals with great corporate names like Hering, Nestlé and H. Stern to launch lines with the artist's name. Apparently this business strategy was not always very popular. In June of last year the then curator of the exhibit, Annateresa Fabris, abandoned the project because she did not appreciate what she called "invasions in the curatorship". According to Kauffman, the academic did not interact well with the project and Penna then assumed her position.
The Work
According to his son João Cândido, his father's work is a "letter to the Brazilian nation; a letter that was portrayed through his eyes and that until recently it had not reached its destination." Among the works never exhibited to the general public, the visitor will see "O Baile na Roça", his first work of Brazilian theme made in 1923, which was censored in the Fine Arts Gallery in 1924. The painting "São Pedro e o Galo," influenced by Mexican muralism and created during the 40s is also in the exhibit.
Penna points out the collection of six "Maria Rosa" drawings that the artist made for the book of the American Vera Keley and that were never seen in Brazil. Another fundamental work was the wall set up with portraits made by Portinari of his best friends, among whom are the writers Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rêgo, Graciliano Ramos and the poets Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Vinícius de Moraes.
It is also exhibited his first work, a portrait of Carlos Gomes that the painter had copied from a pack of cigarettes and that he made when he was only 10 years old. His last canvas, left unfinished, is a painting of the Carajá Indian, from 1961 and that is also on the exhibit.
The exhibit is not chronological but divides the work of Portinari in phases. That owes partly to the fact that his extensive production involved a problem of space for the organizers of the event. The series "Retirantes" that portray the tragedy of the migrant trying to escape from the northeastern drought is a good example of this emotional side of the artist that has been criticized so much in allegations of being insincere and coldly created to appeal to the public's emotions.
Portinari died when he was only 59 years old, as a result of intoxication by the lead on his paints, especially in the yellow and white, that he insisted in using even though his doctors had advised him not to. The paintings and panels he made for the church in Batatais in 1948 were created using, in its majority, a Dutch paint of extremely toxic composition that contained arsenic. His insistent use of this paint cost him a serious hospitalization in 1954, due to a grave hemorrhage, and eight years later his death, when he was preparing an exhibit for the Royal Palace in Milan.
(text extracts "borrowed" from the excellent www.brazzil.com . Check http://www.brazzil.com/p44mar98.
htm)
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