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Anita Malfatti
The shifting ground of modernism [Part 1]
By Marguerite Itamar Harrison*

Anita Malfatti’s pioneering role in the history of Brazilian Modernism has been unequivocally recognized. This essay delves beneath such recognition to underscore the role international Modernist exhibitions and anti-academic art instruction played in the artist’s early career. In doing so, my purpose is to position the artist within a broader Modernist scope, and thus, validate her role beyond Brazilian parameters.

Anita Malfatti’s early experiences situated her within an avant-garde coterie overseas, yet at the same time reinforced the incongruities of her work within her own country. In keeping with the theme of "Grand Expositions," I would venture to suggest that this incompatibility may have resulted initially from the nature of the art exhibitions that took place in Brazil vis-à-vis Europe and the United States during the first two decades of the twentieth century, that is, in the early Modernist period.

In this age of globalization, it is difficult for us to put ourselves in Brazilian artist Anita Malfatti’s place almost one hundred years ago. According to Marta Rossetti Batista, who has meticulously researched and thoroughly narrated the life of Malfatti, there were few art resources and references to guide the young artist within the then provincial city of São Paulo: "Aside from book and magazine illustrations, Anita knew little about art, in a city without galleries, without annual Art Salons, and practically without Fine Arts museums" [Batista 14]. When Anita Malfatti departed for Germany in 1910, and then again for the United States in 1915, she embarked on an odyssey that would supply her with a visual context, by situating her firmly within an up-to-date international art scene. Moreover, her personal journey would contribute toward the transformation of Brazilian art in the 20th century.

In order for this transformation to take place, art pioneers like Malfatti needed to transport the scandalous shock of the modern to Brazil. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Brazilian art lacked context beyond the academic tradition that had been imported from France in the nineteenth century. Due to the scarcity of art institutions through which to introduce Brazilians to the avant-garde, Malfatti by default served as a veritable conduit of Modernist art to her countrymen by way of her own new works. She did so at the Exposição de Pintura Moderna Anita Malfatti, held in a large hall that at the time was beginning to be frequently used for art exhibitions, on Rua Líbero Badaró in São Paulo, between December 12th 1917 and January 11th 1918.

The exhibition did not spring from Malfatti’s initiative; rather, from the beginning, she seemed cautious and tense about the selection of the works to be included. According to Marta Rossetti Batista, she had not wanted to create an exhibition that would provoke controversy; her intention was instead purely didactic. She wanted to highlight her North-American paintings, but—well aware of public reaction to other exhibitions of `Modern Art,’ such as the Armory Show in New York—her selection of the 53 works was deliberately calculated so as not to be too challenging [Batista 65]. For instance, she omitted many of the male nudes she had completed in the U.S. and instead included such works as Tropical, which she had completed in Brazil upon her return [see Illustrations 1 and 2]. The latter was a painting that softened her color palette and minimized her use of abstracted forms (note the contrast between the realistically rendered fruit tray in the foreground and the freer, abstracted background, as well as the more muted palette used throughout. Indeed it has been determined that in order to create this painting Anita literally painted over a canvas that she had brought back from the U.S.). Unfortunately Malfatti’s best-laid plans did not avert the controversy she had so conscientiously sought to avoid.

It should be emphasized that this 1917 exhibition of Anita Malfatti’s works was practically a one-person show; it was neither an individual’s nor a movement’s retrospective (Malfatti was only 28 years old at the time). The private nature of the display, therefore, was not in keeping with the sweeping, grandly-conceived exhibitions that had earmarked the decade in Europe and North America, such as the Second Post-Impressionist exhibition in London, the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, and the Armory Show in New York City, and which had familiarized the world at large to an array of Modernist tendencies.

A grandiose Modernist exhibition would undoubtedly have caused scandal, eliciting negative reactions from critics and the general public alike, such as the Armory Show had provoked in 1913 and as the Semana de Arte Moderna was to do in São Paulo in 1922. At the Armory Show, however, the organizers had deliberately (and brilliantly) introduced a pluralistic sampling of European Modernism alongside more traditional North American contributions. This arrangement actually served to cast the latter in a more positive, less critical light with both homefront viewers and critics.

By contrast, Anita Malfatti’s paintings in her 1917 exhibition stood alone, without buffers, like Modernists sore thumbs. Even though she had chosen to include a handful of minor works by other artists (for the most part going-away presents given to her by some of her North-American colleagues from the Independent School), the contents of the exhibition provided scant means by which to ground viewers in the international scope and pictorial variations of Modernism. From the artist’s standpoint, the inclusion of works by others was supposed to have served the purpose of informing the Brazilian audience that, in her words, "I’m not the only person who paints in this style unfamiliar to you; out there, this is the new, current art many others are experimenting with" [Batista 66].

Despite this goal Malfatti’s works appeared in a perceptual vacuum. Without the historical context of recent predecessors, such as Cézanne and the Fauves; without the sanction of fellow exhibitors; without that of official recognition from a collecting establishment—for instance, purchases by a trend-setting museum (In New York, the Metropolitan Art Museum had purchased a Cézanne from the Armory Show, thereby institutionalizing the approval of Modernism in America)—Malfatti’s work appeared, for want of a better word, freakish. Contrary to the artist’s intent, therefore, her own bold, stridently colorful and distorted portraits created confrontation, and in the words of Marta Rossetti Batista, "rupture" [Batista 58].

In 1917 Brazil, not only was Anita Malfatti an artist who had broken the Academy’s strict rules, she was also a woman who had violated society’s rules of propriety that dictated what feminine painting should look like. Indeed, upon her return from the States, Malfatti’s own family members had been unabashedly frank in their disappointment: her North-American works were even harsher in quality than her paintings had been from her stay in Germany. They were not pintura suave, not soft enough in quality; rather they had been referred to as "dantesque" [Batista 60]. Malfatti was, therefore, a Brazilian woman painting in a non-academic, non-traditional style. Indeed, critic Monteiro Lobato, whose infamous attack on Anita is most often cited by scholars, chided her for presenting a non-realistic and, therefore, anti-nationalistic style of painting [Batista 70].

Setting aside the audience for the moment, it is fair to say that Anita Malfatti created her own personal, contemporary context for her artwork beyond Brazil, through travel abroad. What made Malfatti’s experience abroad different from those of other Brazilian artists who had traveled abroad before her? In my opinion, the answer can be divided into two related parts. First of all, the key can be found in the type of Modernist retrospective exhibitions Anita experienced on her travels: directly, at the Sonderbund retrospective in Cologne in 1912, and indirectly at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Secondly, the answer lies in the type of art instruction she was to receive, especially during her U.S. sojourn, in particular the liberating and progressive instruction she was to experience at the Independent School of Art in New York City, under the direction of North-American artist Homer Boss.

As I have already mentioned, exhibitions such as the Sonderbund in Cologne and its North-American counterpart, the Armory Show, established a visual context for Modernism on a massive, sweeping scale, beyond national borders. By literally collapsing spatial distances between artists, these retrospective exhibitions effectively compressed time, speeding the evolution of Modernist art and rocketing Europeans and North Americans who "got it" into the Modern era. Conversely, they also served to cast unrepresented geographies—such as Brazil and other Latin American countries—out of the present into an ever more quickly receding past. According to this fanciful model, it’s not a stretch to say that the paintings Malfatti executed in the early twentieth century were seen and judged in Brazil by "nineteenth-century" eyes.

(... to be continued next issue - Part II)

List of Illustrations

1. Anita Malfatti, Ritmo (torso), 1915-16. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 61 x 46.6 cm, Collection Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP, São Paulo.

2. Anita Malfatti, Tropical, c. 1916. Oil on canvas, 77 x 102 cm, Collection Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo.

Works Cited

Altschuler, Bruce. The Avant-Garde in Exhibitions: New Art in the Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Amaral, Tarsila do. "Anita Malfatti, 6-12-45." In Tarsila Cronista. Edited with an introduction by Aracy Amaral. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2001, 207-210.

A.S. Baylinson, 1882-1950: a Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Conté Crayon Drawings in the Art Students League Gallery, October 21st to November 10th, 1951. New York: Art Students League Gallery, 1951.

Bastos, Eliana. Entre o Escândalo e o Sucesso: A Semana de 22 e o Armory Show. Campinas, São Paulo: Editora da UNICAMP, 1991.

Batista, Marta Rosetti. Anita Malfatti: No Tempo e no Espaço. São Paulo: IBM Brasil, 1985.

Goodrich, Lloyd. Pioneers of Modern Art in America: Decade of the Armory Show. New York: Whitney, Praeger Publishers, 1963.