Arte e Política: a trajetória artística e a militância comunista do pintor Candido Portinari (1920-1949)

• Ano de defesa: 2022
• Autor(a) principal: Aredes, Ana Carolina Machado
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo; BR; Doutorado em História; Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais; UFES; Programa de Pós-Graduação em História
• Palavras-chave em Português: Portinari; Arte Social; Estado; Política; Comunismo; subject.br-rjbn; História
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/16205

This thesis aims to understand the artistic trajectory and the political and social engagement of the painter Candido Portinari between the years 1920 and 1949. As documentary sources, articles, periodicals and photographs of the time were used, but mainly the correspondence exchanged between Portinari and his influential circle of epistolary friendships, composed of important names in the art, intellectuals and politics of that period. In addition, some of the painter's works were analysed artistically and historically through the understanding of the context in which they were produced. The time frame established started in the 1920s because it was at this time that Portinari began his formal education in fine arts at the traditional Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro. Enrolled in this institution, the painter won a scholarship to Europe, a trip for which he left in 1928. In that continent he underwent a transformation not only in his way of interpreting painting, but also in relation to the importance of the artist's social role. Determined to represent Brazilian’s in his compositions, he returned to Brazil in 1931, when Getúlio Vargas had already ascended to the presidency of the Republic. That same year he met Mário de Andrade, with whom he established a significant bond of friendship. Soon, he became one of the exponents of the Brazilian Modernist Movement, putting himself in a prominent position that led him to be invited by the Varguista government to make numerous orders under state patronage. In 1945, with the end of the Estado Novo and the Second World War, the Communist Party that gained many followers around the world, in Brazil began to recruit many artists and intellectuals to its staff. Portinari not only joined the Brazilian Communist Party, but also contested two elections for this party – the first in 1945, as a candidate for federal deputy for São Paulo; the second in 1947, running for a Senate seat in the same state. With the intensification of the persecution of the PC and its members undertaken by the government of Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Portinari, feeling threatened, went into exile in Uruguay for almost a year. The social concern that guided his work as an artist would have led him to approach the political guidelines defended by communism, this same question kept him faithful to figurative art, which earned him numerous criticisms from the second half of the 1940s onwards, with the arrival of abstract aesthetics in Brazil.