Tarsila do Amaral

A pioneer of Brazilian modernism and a trailblazing figure in Latin America, Tarsila do Amaral is acclaimed for her richly colored paintings that fused European avant-garde aesthetics with local iconography. Her work has been celebrated around the world, and received a landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 2018. Tarsila left her native São Paulo for Paris in 1920, studying under cubist figures like Fernand Léger and André Lhote in the French capital. The following decade marked a prolific period of production as she returned to Brazil to explore her heritage. During this period, Tarsila painted her iconic Abaporu (1928), which inspired the Manifesto Antropófago, a call for Brazil to break from its colonial past and assert its own cultural identity; it sold for $1.4 million in 1995. Tasila’s early works have since been auctioned for as much as $20 million, as paid by the MoMA to acquire A Lua (1928). A 1931 trip to the Soviet Union inspired a turn to more sociopolitical works, but Tarsila returned to her signature landscapes in the 1950s.