By the end of her life, Anita Malfatti, a leading artist of Brazilian modernism, dedicated her work to folk motifs. Beginning in the 1940s, she radically transformed her art, announcing plans to abandon the formulas of international vanguards altogether and produce increasingly simplified paintings. Her themes also changed: with the use of a sfumato technique in pastel tones, representations of rural Brazilian life came to replace portraiture and expressionist paintings of indoor scenes. This stage of her career has an evident influence from self-taught artists and the work of Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896–1962). In this period, Malfatti painted flowers, landscapes and genre scenes–especially dances, children’s games, rural balls, processions, marriages and other religious celebrations from the Brazilian countryside. Batizado na Roça [Baptism in the Countryside] (1940s) was likely produced between the 1940s and 1950s, when the artist spent time in the outskirts of São Paulo, especially the municipalities of São Miguel Paulista and Embu. This painting features several subjects whose faces were painted without much detailing, and whose skin bears a dark tone. They appear in family communion, amid their day-to-day leisure and relaxation. In dialogue with one another, the different generations seem comfortable amidst the landscape and animals. Malfatti’s painting delimits certain centers of action: subjects ride horses, play the guitar, carry babies, balance objects on their heads, drive a cart, play with each other and with a dog, and rest against a tree. But the main scene is the rural baptism that gives the painting its title. In the center, we see a Catholic church, surrounded by tropical plants, with simple houses in the back-ground. In front of the church, a man holds his young daughter’s hand while his wife carries the baby soon to be baptized.
— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018
