Cândido Portinari (1903-1962)

Helena Rubinstein Collection, New York
Sale: Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, Modern Paintings and Sculptures, April 20, 1966, lot 73, illustrated

Rio de Janeiro, Museo Nacional de Belas Artes, Exposicao de Pintura Candido Portinari, 1943, illustrated
Chicago, The Art Institute, The United States Collects Pan-American Art, 1959, no. 70, illustrated

Cândido Portinari is perhaps the artist whose work expresses with greatest eloquence the spirit of his age.  The best known and among the most innovative Brazilian artists of the mid-twentieth century, Portinari gave voice to themes of national identity and the call for social justice.  His paintings depicting immigrants and laborers speak directly to the people and portray them with a powerful grace.  In bringing his subjects to the canvas (or wall) Portinari drew on multiple art historical sources, uniting the principles of Mexican muralism with the formal solutions developed by Picasso in the 1920s and 1930s and spatial relationships adapted from Renaissance perspective. Moça Penteando los Cabelos is a classic example of this fusion that reflects the artist’s sensitive observation of the movements of daily life.  Its dignity derives from a composition both simple and monumental, its subject at once a young Brazilian mulatta and a universal Venus. 

Portinari considered the community of common men to be the foundation of contemporary life and society, and the seed from which his own art grew.  He famously declared, “I decided to paint the Brazilian reality, naked and crude as it is.” It was the community from which he too had emerged, born to working class Italian immigrants in the coffee-growing region of Sao Paulo state.  Somewhat ironically, the power with which he depicted the members of the working class resulted in lifting Portinari out of it. 

Portinari’s fame spread beyond Brazil when he won a prize at the 1935 Carnegie International.  In 1940 he had solo exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Alfred Barr purchased Morro for MoMA’s collection.  The paintings were met with critical acclaim and caught the eye of influential American collectors eager to pay dearly for them.  Chief among Portinari’s patrons was

Helena Rubinstein, who acquired Moca Penteando los Cabelos in 1943, adding it to an already large collection of his work.  In addition to this painting, Rubinstein’s collection also included the lyrical Naturaleza Muerta com Limoes also offered in this sale (lot 45).