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Tarsila's niece remembers moments spent with her aunt
20 / 2 / 2008 - Nurse Maria Clara Estanislau do Amaral, from the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) at Unicamp, carries Amaral in her family tree, a very common surname in Brazil. But she is the great-niece of the artist Tarsila do Amaral, who had a profound impact on modern Brazilian painting. It also marked the life of Maria Clara who, despite insisting that she is not an artist, reproduced many of her aunt's paintings, whom she greatly admired.

The conversation with Maria Clara also takes place in part through the Tarsila Viajante exhibition, which can be visited until March 16 at the Pinacoteca do Estado (at Praça da Luz, 2), in SP. The exhibition marks an important moment in understanding Tarsila's legacy. Abaporu, her best-known work, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary, inspired the Anthropophagous Manifesto by Oswald de Andrade, her ex-husband.

The Unicamp nurse says that their meeting almost always occurred during family visits. In one of them, where she accompanied her mother, Maria Clara remembers that she was around 12 years old and Tarsila, already elderly, was bedridden. “I had a delicate lilac scarf on my head, covering part of my gray hair, keeping my bangs visible,” she recalls. Tired of the adults' conversation, she decided to visit Tarsila's apartment. In the hallway, she reports, she was entranced by several paintings by the artist, whom she now recognizes in exhibitions and books. Tarsila used geometric shapes, vibrant colors and “smooth painting”, without brush marks.

Tarsila - Regarding her aunt's work, she believes that it was always done with care. It took a long time. She regrets not having been very aware of the great artist her aunt was because, according to her, there were other talents for the arts in the family. Tarsila's own mother was a great composer and pianist. Tarsila, at one point, was also very unsure whether she would be an artist or a pianist.

Even though she didn't really realize the artist's importance, Maria Clara felt people's reverence for dealing with her. “But she wasn’t dour. She was kind and I always saw her smiling,” she emphasizes. The last memory of her aunt was at an exhibition in a hall on Avenida Angélica. “I greeted her and she was sitting in a wheelchair,” she comments.

Born in Capivari, SP, Tarsila passed away in 1973. Maria Clara inherited some brushes and some watercolor boxes from her. His uncle Guilherme kept a piano, the same one that his niece saw in the Albuquerque Lins apartment, in São Paulo. Cousin Tarsilinha directly participated in the reconstruction of her famous aunt's story, writing the book Tarsila by Tarsila. Maria Clara has another sister who works at Unicamp, botanist Maria do Carmo.

What most catches her attention is that Tarsila managed to rescue her lost childhood through art on the farms where she lived, such as São Bernardo, in Capivari, and Santa Tereza, in São Pedro. “The most beautiful thing was the 'caipirinha' that she took to her work. It was the same thing I saw on the family farm and on the Sorocabana train route: those charming little colorful houses and bucolic images,” she says.

An art admirer, Maria Clara believes that drawing enriches her undergraduate classes. “It’s more didactic, as students learn better by seeing images,” she says. She is often called upon to make art wherever she goes. She even created a teaching mural illustrating the different contraceptive methods and the logo of Hospital Amigo da Criança do Caism. “Health education topics need to be aesthetically presentable to attract attention”, she assesses. Maria Clara continues her doctoral research and comments that nursing takes up a lot of her time. “But that’s what I chose – the human being and the relationship with him.”

Exposure - The Tarsila Viajante exhibition brings together 40 paintings and more than a hundred drawings, some unpublished, made by the artist during some trips abroad and to Brazil. These were forays that had a strong influence on her work and the constitution of her visual repertoire. “Tarsila Viajante” highlights the works, but also the artist’s creation process. The work is currently part of the collection of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericana in Buenos Aires, sold at auction in 1995 and which will be the exhibition's next stop. The exhibition, since January in SP, has attracted around 25 thousand people.

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