São Paulo, Brazil, 1889 —
São Paulo, Brazil, 1964

Around 1915, Homer Boss, director of the Independent School of Art, embarked with one of his new students for a boat trip off the coast of New England. The climate was not conducive, even for that choppy coast, with a dark and restless sea; the man, however, maneuvered the fragile wooden hull in a dangerous way, taking it towards the sharp rocks. Very close to the tragedy, Boss turned to the student: “Are you afraid of death?” Nothing is known of the look and heart of this young woman at that moment; it is known, however, that her answer was given as if invoking the weight of the future that would be imposed on her: “No”.

Over the next two years, Anita Malfatti continued her rich apprenticeship with American teachers and colleagues. Encouraged to creative freedom by the institution’s avant-garde environment, the artist deepened her sensitivity to color and light, involved in a fascination she had cultivated since 1910, when she carried out her first studies in Germany, in the studios of Lovis Corinth, Ernst Bischoff-Culm and Fritz Burger-Mühlfeld.

In December 1917, back in Brazil and encouraged by friends like Di Cavalcanti and Arnaldo Simões Pinto, the young artist held the “Modern Painting Exhibition – Anita Malfatti”. Opened at the then number 111 of Líbero Badaró Street, the center of the provincial cosmopolitan pretense that permeated the city of São Paulo, the exhibition included notable works such as the portraits The yellow man and The woman with green hair (1915-16) who, with wide movements of the brush, synthesized the anatomical shapes with colors of powerful vibrating effect. In landscapes like O Farol de Monhegan (1915) and A ventania (1915-17), nature showed itself to be fairy, surprising by the luminescence and vertigo of spiral strokes, despite the moderately conventional compositions they support.

The exhibition received severe criticism both from the artist’s own family and from relevant journalists, such as Monteiro Lobato and Nestor Pestana, taking the painter to a very difficult personal crossroads between the academy and the avant-garde. However, it can be thought that the very constitution of modernism in Brazil was made precisely at this very crossroads. However, a vehement defense of Malfatti’s work, which united the artists and intellectuals of São Paulo’s modernism, driving other artistic insubmissions that culminated in the Modern Art Week of 1922. Accompanied by the great names of Brazilian avant-garde music, arts and poetry, Anita Malfatti exhibited at the Week in a cultural environment equal to his work ..

Considered by art history as the sacrificial act to modernism, Anita Malfatti’s boldness retains the specific mythical courage, capable of transforming the finitude of acts into continuous and timeless inspiration.

GGS