The Return of the Tamagni Collection:To the Stars Through Difficult Paths

The MAM in São Paulo recreates its own history in the exhibition entitled The Return of the Tamagni Collection: To the Stars Through Difficult Paths, which will remain open to the public until March 11. Curated by Felipe Chaimovich and Fernando Oliva-who have chosen to exhibit the remote and recent pasts side by side-the exhibition includes the entire donation of works that represented the beginning of the MAM's collection. The Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo looks back at its own past in an exhibition that happens to be the first of its kind, since 1968, to showcase the entire collection posthumously donated in 1967 by Carlo Tamagni, art collector and member of the museum's board of trustees. The curatorship promotes a debate on the role the MAM-SP has played throughout its existence, including the period in which the institution lost its original collection -donated in 1963 by the Universidade de São Paulo- the arrival of Tamagni in 1967, and the return in 1969 to its current address. The Tamagni collection is predominantly modernist and includes works by artists like Tarsila do Amaral, Aldo Bonadei, and Francisco Rebolo. But the collection also developed an interest in the 1940s and 1950s vanguards, in works by artists like Fernando Lemos, Livio Abramo, and Arnaldo Pedroso-d'Horta, among others. With the goal of underscoring the various paths that the collection has sought throughout its history, the exhibition also showcases contemporary works like Totó Treme Terra (Earth-trembling Table Soccer) by the Chelpa Ferro collective; and Palhaço com Buzina reta-Monte de Irônicos (Straight-horned Clown-Mount of the Ironic) by Laura Lima.