Emiliano Di Cavalcanti - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Emiliano Augusto Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Melo (September 6, 1897–October 26, 1976), known as Di Cavalcanti, was a Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

who sought to produce a form of Brazilian art free of any noticeable European influences. His wife was the painter Noêmia Mourão, who would be an inspiration in his works in the later 1930s.

Early years (1897-1922)

Born in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

in 1897, Di Cavalcanti was influenced by the intellectuals he met at his uncle’s house. This would provide the basis for a lifelong politically driven artistic career, which would start by the production of a drawing published by the magazine fon-fon. He engaged in a pursuit for a Law degree in São Paulo but did not manage to complete this pursuit. Di Cavalcanti moved to São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

in 1917. At this time he held his first exhibition at the Editora do Livro (o livro bookstore) in São Paulo. This first exhibition would only include caricatures with very viable symbolist influences to be found presented in the works.

In 1918 Di Cavalcanti would become part of a group of intellectuals and artists in São Paulo which would contain artist like Oswald de Andrade

Oswald de Andrade

José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....

, Mário de Andrade

Mário de Andrade

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...

, Guilherme de Almeida, etc. This group would be the direct cause for bringing the Semana de Arte (week of modern art) in life in 1922 (see the cover page on the right of this page). This movement along with the Group of Five wished to revive the artistic environment in São Paulo at the time and had as its main interest to free Brazilian art from the European influences found within it. Nevertheless, the works Di Cavalcanti displayed at the Semana revealed varying Symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, Expressionist

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, and Impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

influences. This can thus be seen as a continuance of European stylistic influences and this would not change until Di Cavalcanti returned from Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

in 1925 to live in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

once again.

Years abroad (1923-1925)

Di Cavalcanti lived in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

and Montparnasse

Montparnasse

Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...

from 1923 until 1925. During this time he was employed as a correspondent for the newspaper Correio da Manhã and attended classes at the Académie Ranson

Académie Ranson

The Académie Ranson was founded in Paris by the French painter Paul Ranson , who himself studied at the Académie Julian, in 1908.- History :...

in Paris, which led him to meet European modernists like Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, George Braque, and Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

. During this time his feelings to create a true Brazilian art would flourish and thus lead to his later works.

Return to Rio de Janeiro (1926-1936)

After returning from Europe and having experienced the modernist movement in Europe Di Cavalcanti would start working on a more Brazilian art, which Di Cavalcanti and the group who held the Semana de Arte already advocated in 1922. During this time he joined the Brazilian Communist Party due to the heightened nationalistic feelings he experienced during three years abroad. Di Cavalcanti embodies the problematic tendency of Brazilian modernists to be pulled in two directions: his subject matter consists of particularly Brazilian themes (mostly mulatto women), but his chief artistic influences are the European modernists and Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

most of all.

In 1929 Di Cavalcanti also started to work on interior design, as seen in the two panels produced for the Teatro João Caetano ( João Caetano Theatre) in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

. In 1930 he was involved in an exhibition of Brazilian art at the International Art Center at the Roerich Museum in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. At this time he once again was involved with correspondence and magazines as he was the principal writer for the newly established magazine forma.

In 1932 another large group was established by Lasar Segall

Lasar Segall

The artist Lasar Segall was a Brazilian Jewish painter, engraver and sculptor born in Lithuania. Segall's work is derived from impressionism, expressionism and modernism...

, Anita Malfatti

Anita Malfatti

Anita Catarina Malfatti is heralded as the first Brazilian artist to introduce European and American forms of Modernism to Brazil...

, and Vitor Becheret which was the Sociedade Pró-Arter Moderna also known as SPAM. The goal of this group was to bring modernism to Brazilian art and follow in the footsteps of the Semana de Arte and encourage a revival of its ideas. On April 28, 1933 this group held the Exposição de Arte Moderna, which was the first exhibition to feature works produced by Picasso

Pablo Picasso

, Léger

Fernand Léger

, and Braque, all of whom were know to the Brazilian people, but whose works had not been seen in the flesh before this exhibition. The exhibition pieces from the European masters were all borrowed from local Brazilian private collections. This exhibition was such a success that during the second showing in the fall many local Brazilian artists, including Di Cavalcanti and Candido Portinari

Cândido Portinari

Candido Portinari was one of the most important Brazilian painters and also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting....

, took part in the exhibition.

Di Cavalcanti would be jailed twice for his communistic beliefs and ties he undertook in prior years. He met his wife-to-be, painter Noêmia Mourão (he was previously married to his cousin Maria in 1921) after his first incarceration in 1932 for supporting Revolução Paulista. They married the following year and she became his traveling partner for the years to come until they both got jailed in 1936.

Europe again (1937-1940)

In 1937 Di Cavalcanti and his wife Noêmia Mourão would set sail to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

to stay there until the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

in the start of 1940. During this three year stay abroad he was awarded a Gold medal in the Art Technique Exhibition in Paris for his murals in the French-Brazilian Coffee Company. After this Di Cavalcanti would produce around 40 works, only to be left behind when he and his wife fled the country on the eve of the German Nazi invasion. They arrived back in São Paulo in 1940.

Back in Brazil (1941-1976)

After his return to Brazil his nationalistic feelings became even stronger, as seen in his representations of mulatto

Mulatto

Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...

women, carnivals, Negroes, deserted alleys, and tropical landscapes, subjects to be found in Brazilian everyday life and social settings and not in European settings. He lectured about these things in 1948 in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, providing a lecture on modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, expressing nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

, and opposing abstraction

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

. In 1951 the first of the Bienals, held at the Museu de Arte Moderna at São Paulo, featured Di Cavalcanti’s works, along with other artists from the South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

n continent who were seeking for a true national art. The Mexican Muralists Diego Rivera and David Siquieros were thus personally invited by Di Cavalcanti and actually attended. The exuberance and expression of true South American art was a very strong incentive for the founder, Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (also known as Ciccilo), to hold this exhibition again, and there was another exhibition in 1953. The works left behind after fleeing Europe in 1940 were to be recovered in 1966 in the basement of the Brazilian Embassy in Paris.

The friendship with Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho was a direct effect to the donation of 559 drawing by Di Cavalcanti himself to the Museu de Arte Contemporânea which was founded by Ciccilo. The Museu de Arte Contempemporânea is also better known as the MAC and currently has 564 drawings by Di Cavalcanti in its possession of which only 5 were acquired through purchases and the others through the donation by the artist himself.

Style and subjects

Di Cavalcanti was obviously obsessed with the female body, since very many representations are to be found within the works he produced. The street scenes depicted by Cavalcanti are cheerful, characterized by a palette of bright colors and the depictions of everyday life in a normal, non-romanticized way. They evoke no strong political undercurrent, as do the works of such Mexican muralists of the 1930s and ‘40s as Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

and David Siqueiros. The works produced by these artists were part of the revolutionary movement in opposition of the new revolutionary government who came to power in Mexico. Di Cavalcanti on the other hand refrained from overt political representations, although he himself was in a pursuit of perfecting a pure Brazilian art which had a clear break with European influences.

He tried through the creation of the Semana de Arte in 1922 and the Bienals in 1951 and 1953 to push for a true Brazilian art which was to be seen as separated from European stylistic influences. This was a dream and philosophy which can be seen as an ideal for Di Cavalcanti which was never found as one can see stylistic influences from the Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

, Muralism, and the European Modernists.

List of artworks

The artworts below are all on display in the Museu de Arte Contempemporânea ( MAC ) in São Paulo, Brazil

As cinco moças de Guaraninguetá, 1926

Which can be viewed on http://masp.uol.com.br/colecao/detalhesArtista.php?car=8

Modern Art Week, São Paulo, 1922

As seen above on the right.

Portrait of Graca Aranha, 1922
Le Corbusier, 1923
Oswald and Mario, 1933
Maeterlinck, 1934
Barbusse, 1935
Duhamel, 1935
Ungaretti,1942
Portrait of Augusto Schmidt, 1950

Exhibitions (above mentioned)

1917 Editoro do Livre, São Paulo, Brazil
1922 Semana de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil
1930 International Art Center, Roerich Center, New York
1932 Exposição de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil
1937 Art Technique Exhibition, Paris, France
1951 Bienal do Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (1st)
1953 Bienal do Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2nd)

External links

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