A Fresh Look at the Work Abaporu by Tarsila do Amaral

In an article recently published by the Estado de São Paulo periodical, Tarsilinha, niece of Tarsila do Amaral and responsible for the rights of the renowned Brazilian artist, revealed details about the publication of the book she authored entitled Abaporu: Un Trabajo de Amor, which offers new interpretations of Abaporu, a famous portrait by Tarsila do Amaral that is of great importance to Brazil for its cultural legacy and that today is part of the Colección Eduardo Costantini of the Museo Latinoamericano-Buenos Aires, in Argentina. After almost 90 years since it was painted, Abaporu gets a new interpretation: from a portrait that represented the creation of the Anthropophagic Movement— led by her then husband Oswald de Andrade—to the latest theory that was actually a self-portrait of Tarsila, possibly naked in front of a mirror, made to impress her husband at the time. In 2011, Tarsilinha decided to perform an impromptu test in a version of this portrait. She proposed the possibility that the work was based on an image reflected in a mirror, one that, slightly tilted, produced the distortion that characterizes the work. Taking advantage of her physical resemblance to her illustrious aunt, Tarsilinha posed in front of a tilted mirror in a pose similar to that in the photo published in the article of the Estado de São Paulo periodical. "I mean, I tried to imitate the pose that the artist probably assumed when she conceived the idea of the painting that she would make in that distant day in 1928," says Tarsilinha in an excerpt from the book. "The magic was complete: the image that I saw in the mirror was uncannily alike to that of the Abaporu figure, as if suddenly we would not have moved in time and space. There, we fund the answer to a puzzle; a new key to understanding a piece that is so full of mystery. " Tarsilinha turned to family photos and memorabilia to present more arguments that back her interpretation. According to a niece of the painter, Helena Amaral Galvão Bueno, in the house where Tarsila lived with Oswald in 1928, there was a huge tilted mirror, just leaning against the wall and right in the room—the studio that she shared with the writer—adjacent to the bedroom. Following Tarsilinha's theory of the artist's anatomical resemblance to the figure in Abaporu, according to statements by other nieces of the artist, Tarsila's second toe was longer than her big toe, just like the portrayed figure's. And the fact that Tarsilinha's foot presents the same characteristic—an inherited trait—only reinforces her thesis. The article concludes by saying that "Recognizing the importance of Abaporu for Brazilian art, and the power of consecrated interpretations about the meaning of the image, Tarsilinha does not intend her conclusion to overlap the broader metaphorical sense that the work projected back then. 'With this book, I will not change the bright idea that Oswald de Andrade had, according to which Abaporu was a man planted on earth. What is important here, is to also make it clear that the work was inspired in the image of Tarsila do Amaral, and in her ability to transform an everyday scene into the most famous Brazilian painting of all times' declares Tarsilinha. In other words: A fresh look at the work of the great-aunt is put in motion; one that recognizes that the simplicity of everyday life is enough to drive creation."