Tarsila do Amaral was one of the greatest Brazilian modernist artists of the twentieth century. Estudo (Academia no. 2) (1923) was painted following do Amaral’s painting studies with Lhote and Gleizes, and reveals succinct Cubist influences, particularly in the volumetric and geometric constructions, as seen in the body of the woman in the centre, the furniture, the vegetation at the top right, and the framed landscape in the background. However, the typical luminosity characteristic of the artist’s oeuvre that was to reach its apogee in her Pau-Brasil phase (1924–1928) is already evident here in the bluish and reddish tones, but especially in the vegetation near the woman’s back, a typical tropical plant, one of those that would gain absurd representations in her Anthropophagic phase (1929–1930). Do Amaral exhibited at Biennale Arte in 1964.
—Fernando Olivia
