Tarsila do Amaral was born to a family of wealthy coffee producers and spent her childhood in her parents’ haciendas and travelling with them throughout Europe. By the age of 30, she had married one of her cousins and had a daughter, and started taking private lessons from Pedro Alexandrino Borges, then a leading figure of academic painting in São Paulo. She moved to Paris in 1920 and enrolled in the Académie Julian. Despite the academy’s traditional teachings, she found inspiration in the city’s more avant-garde circles. While she was away, São Paulo hosted one of the founding events of Brazilian modernism: the Semana de arte moderna in...
■ Tarsila do Amaral e Di Cavalcanti, mito e realidade no modernismo brasileiro (catalogue d’exposition), Milliet M. A. (textes), São Paulo, Museu de arte moderna, 2002.
