Nora Quintanilla
New York, March 9. The political art of the Brazilian Antonio Henrique Amaral, who criticized the dictatorship in his country through some famous pop aesthetic paintings that portrayed bananas smashed by forks, resonates again in New York, the city that for years gave him refuge and freedom.
The Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery opens this Thursday “O Discourse”, an exhibition of ten works by Amaral that have remained until a week ago in the private collection of the artist, who died in 2015, and that make up his first show in the US .in a generation.
The gallery’s director, Robert Grosman, explained to EFE in a visit before opening to the public that the works span some three decades of Amaral’s life and reflect the issues that mattered most to him, all related to “oppression”: first politics and later that of capitalism.
Born in 1935 in Brazil, this pioneer of Latin American art saw his career marked by the 1964 coup d’état and the subsequent military dictatorship, and he expressed his discontent in the following years by resorting to the pop aesthetic, which was flourishing at the time in the US and United Kingdom, and the traditional decorative arts of the “brasiliana”.
“He used a kind of flat-pop vernacular to create highly politically charged artwork, but in a clever way that didn’t draw a lot of attention to him because, of course, the creative class was being policed, censored and arrested, if they spoke against the dictatorship,” he explained.
This is the case of the “Bocas” series, in which “O discurso ou El Tirano” (1967), with a face screaming into microphones to enhance its influence, or “Third Person” (1967), which it portrays “politicians arguing to no end”.
Starting in the 1970s, when the situation hardened in Brazil and Amaral sought refuge in New York, the painter’s work gained ferocity, something that is reflected in his “Campo de Batalha” series, with the banana as a national symbol being destroyed by forks, of which there are three works.
When democracy was restored, in the late 1980s, the artist “turns his attention to other forms of oppression, and one of his latest themes is the destruction of the Amazon jungle, for which he makes a series of paintings that comment on capitalism. out of control,” adds Grosman.
That feeling is seen in “Armas” (1992), where he draws some kind of sharp knives next to rocks, a trunk and some threatening clouds of smoke, coming from factories.
The work that closes the show is “Casal de novo” (1995), with a surreal air, in which two black bodies are united and surrounded by blue clouds “with a celebration effect”, and which seems to reflect a more “hopeful” sentiment. for the “planet and humanity,” he adds.
The director assured that there is a lot of interest in Latin American art in the market and that proof of this is that museums now dedicate specific departments to it, for which reason he said he hoped that collectors would pay attention to the “single voice, but one that resonates in different cultures”, by Amaral. EFE
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