Tarsi/a do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil
21st February, 2025 – 1st June, 2025
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Avenida Abandoibarra
2 48009 Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Tarsi/a do Amaral. Painting Modern Brazil, an ambitious exhibition dedicated to an artist considered a key figure of Brazilian modernism. Divided into six thematic sections, the exhibition allows visitors to discover Tarsila do Amaral (or just Tarsila, her artistic name) as the creator of an original and evocative body of work, drawing on both indigenous and popular imagery and on modernizing forces of a rapidly-transforming country.
Self-portrait (Manteau Rouge) [Auto-retrato (Manteau Rouge)], 1923
Oil on canvas
73 × 60.5 cm
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes / Ibram, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: ©Museu Nacional de Belas Artes/Ibram, Rio de Janeiro / Jaime Acioli
In the 1920s, moving between Sao Paulo and Paris, Tarsila ferried between the avant-gardes of these two cultural capitals and constructed a “Brazilian” iconographic world filtered through the lens of Cubism and Primitivism in vogue in the French capital at the time. Her painting then inspired the Pou-Brasil and Anthropophagic movements, whose search for an “authentic,” multicultural, and multiracial Brazil aimed to refound the country’s relationship with the European “centers” of colonization.
The activist dimension of Tarsila’s paintings from the 1930s and their ability to accompany the profound transformations of her social and urban environment until the 1960s confirm the strength of an oeuvre attuned to her time, always willing to reinvent itself, despite the unstable conditions of the different times and contexts that an independent woman artist had to face.
Fruit seller (O Vendedor de Frutas), 1925
Oil on canvas
108 x 84.5 cm
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro
©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A.
Photo: ©Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM Rio de Janeiro / Romulo Fialdini & Valentino Fialdini
With her invitation to delve into a Brazilian modernity that she contributed to forging even more than she painted it, Tarsila reveals in her production all the complexity of this concept always subject to debate, which raises identity and societal questions of great importance even today, both in Brazil and Europe.
Activities
Opening Talk (February 19)
Cecilia Braschi, Leading Curator and curator of the exhibition in Paris, and Geaninne Gutierrez Guimaroes, Curator at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, present a preview of the exhibition before it opens to the public.
Shared Reflections* (February and March)
In these guided tours, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao staff members offer different points of view on the exhibition.
- Curatorial Tour with Geaninne Gutierrez-Guimaraes, Museum Curator: February 21
- Key Concepts, with Luz Maguregui, Museum Education Coordinator, March 12
*Sponsored by Fundaci6n Vizcafna Aguirre
Tour with… Bina Daigeler (March 21)
For Tarsila do Amaral-dubbed by Oswald de Andrade as a “Young Caipira dressed by Poiret”-fashion was a visual extension of her modernism. Combining Parisian fashion with Brazilian taste, her signature style accentuated the character of her pictorial work through avant-garde colors and styles.
In this tour of the exhibition, fashion history expert and internationally recognized as a film costume designer Bina Daigeler analyzes how the designs of the period had an impact on Tarsila’s life and work.
Screening of Tarsilinha (April 19 and 26)
This animated film is based on Tarsila do AmaraI’s work about memory and the search for identity. Directed by Kiko Mistrorigo in 2022, the film refers to key works by the artist, while the soundtrack composed by Zeca Baleiro pays tribute to the musical compositions of Heitor Villa-Lobos, another reference of the Brazilian modernist circle.
Museum Member Activities
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Members also have the opportunity to participate in additional tours and activities related to each exhibition.
Soiree, Matinee (February 18 and 19)
Members-only Tours with the exhibition curators prior to opening to the public. For International and Honor Members.
Lagunartean (February 27)
Guided Tour of the exhibition and subsequent lunch at the Bistro Guggenheim Bilbao. Exclusive Tours (March 4, 7, 9,11, 14,16,18, 21, 23) Guided Group Tours to the exhibition.
In Depth Tours (March 5 and 12)
Talks in small groups to contextualize the exhibition followed by a guided tour.
360° Immersions (March 13)
Free Online Talks given by the Museum’s Associate Director of Digital Education.
Tarsi/a do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil opens on the 21st of February, 2025 until the 1st of June, 2025 at The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
©2025 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.
