Tarsila do Amaral: The Moon: MoMA One on One Series

How Tarsila do Amaral forged the beginnings of a unique modernist vocabulary in Brazil

Tarsila do Amaral’s (1886–1973) painting The Moon (1928), a highly stylized, desolate nocturne, grew from the artist’s desire to create a new national form of expression for Brazil. In The Moon and other paintings of the late 1920s, do Amaral successfully “cannibalized” modern European painting and Brazilian popular culture and Indigenous lore to transform them into something new. In this volume of the MoMA One on One series, curator Beverly Adams investigates do Amaral’s unique negotiation of her Brazilian identity and the contemporary innovations of Europe, a balancing act on which she built a modern art for her country.