An Italian migrant to São Paulo, Fulvio Pennacchi developed a figurative painting style that reflected everyday popular life, and which deviated from early twentieth-century trends towards abstractionism. In O Circo (1942), Pennacchi uses ochre tones to address the central theme of traditional Brazilian rural entertainments. A tent occupies the centre of the painting, comprising a green and brown circular structure on which “CIRCO” is written. Next to the entrance door, there is a notice for the public to wait and, in front of this, two clowns with white painted faces look at the viewer. Other characters appear from the back or in profile, mostly Black people and several animals. A peasant riding a donkey crosses the scene and the floor is made of “red earth” – characteristic of some Brazilian regions, which Italian immigrants who worked on coffee plantations called “terra rossa”. Mountains, houses, and a church appear in the background, under the twilight. Pennacchi absorbed what he directly saw in his surroundings, painting as an interpreter of a bucolic and popular Brazil.
This is the first time the work of Fulvio Pennacchi is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Daniela Rodrigues
