MASP

Following the same trend, in 1933, in Rio de Janeiro, intellectuals founded the Felippe d’Oliveira Society as a tribute to the Brazilian poet who had died in Paris at age 42. As early as in 1926 the author of Vida extincta (1911), reviewed in 1932 by Agrippino Grieco as “excellent”, had published Lanterna Verde, that definitively instated him as a significant author of modernist Portuguese language. In 1934 Portinari received a commission to paint a posthumous portrait of Felippe d’Oliveira, currently at the Masp, to illustrate the poetry magazine Lanterna Verde, which the Society published with the objective to publicize the author’s work and promote poetry as a literary genre. According to Miceli (1996, p. 106) in his review of this portrait, the painting was reproduced as an insert in the first issue of this magazine, in May of 1934. Miceli wrote: “Possibly the landscape on the left part of the composition may be interpreted as being connected with the circumstances of his death. Due to his political activities in favor of the 1932 revolution in São Paulo, Felippe d’Oliveira was forced to seek exile in France, where he died in a car crash just outside the city of Auxerre. The landscape portion of the portrait depicts a cypress-lined road having on the background, on the horizon, the suggestion of a town settlement. The portraiture tradition on which Portinari based himself to paint this canvas contains countless examples of a similar correlation between figure and background. Possibly, an association could be drawn between the use of Flemish and Florentine models and the intention to suggest a scene evoking the automobile accident. Here the cypress-lined road, often depicted as a funereal allegory, has been recovered by the artist”.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

As early as in 1932 the most well-bred critic in Brazil in the 1930s, Paulo Rossi Osir, pointed out portraiture as Portinari’s best talent. His opinion was propped on the masterpiece Portrait of Maria (1932, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro), that had secured for the artist a place in the crossroads articulated in the 1920s when, after Modigliani’s death, his heritage was reviewed by the great Italian masters of the Valori Plastici. In the meantime, in Germany, a number of artists were overcoming Expressionism and turning to a movement called New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit).

— Unknown authorship, 1998