Abstract
Abstract In the 1950s, Mário Pedro claimed Alfredo Volpi to be the greatest national painter and a master to be followed by younger artists. This was a conflict-ridden process, which put at stake the old canons of Brazilian modernism and also the way in which the history of national art was written. Following this process, we also come face-to-face with the mechanism responsible for mobilizing the presence of people, the persistence of national values and the importance of cities in the Brazilian artistic field.
Highlights
In the exhibition catalogue we read: From this arises the tendency to even further accentuate the constructive quality of the landscape, its essential lines and masses, no longer taking as a pretext the difference between the seasons, or the hours, or even what was called the ‘state of the soul,’ but instead the profundity of nature revealed in its intimate meanings of collaborating with man (Mariani, 1937: n.p.). It was at this moment that critics started to take an interest in Volpi and that Mário de Andrade crystallized a particular form of apprehending the figure and work of the painter
This form functioned as a mythology, a set article | marcos pedro rosa of descriptions repeatedly invoked over the history of national art whenever critics and admirers focused their attention on the artist
The São Paulo poet described this generation’s style as the outcome of a proletarian psychology with an artisanal propensity: as a social condition that led to pictorial timidity and the choice of subject matter like suburban landscapes
Summary
The sharing of this prize proved to be a historiographic landmark in the consolidation of abstract painting in the country and projected Volpi to the centre of contemporary discussions in art.7 Recipient of the award at the São Paulo Biennale and claimed by the concretists, he boosted his influence in the Brazilian art world, his commercial power and his appeal for the critics.
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