Tarsila do Amaral, Anthropophagy, 1929


This piece by Tarsil do Amaral is considered to be primitivism. It’s an abstracted, racist ideal of workers of African descent in South America. First, we can assume that these people worked on banana plantations as they are banana shaped, and yellow. Next, these figures in the subject have small heads, large breasts, and large feet. The small heads suggest that the figures are unintelligent, or uncivilized. Next, the large breasts represent fertility and they could also suggest the idea of nudity, or primitive sexuality. The large feet on the figures represent labor and once again the notion that these figures are uncivilized. The reason that large feet suggests that these figures are uncivilized is because they are barefoot which again refers to the nudity. These figures don’t have any eyes, mouths, ears, or noses either which can also represent their unintelligence and unicivilized manner. It’s showing that they don’t think and are very physically driven. They reproduce, and labor, and that is all that they do. These figures lack any personality, and the only aspects suggesting that they are supposed to be human is the title Anthropophagy and the recognizable body parts: the small heads on skinny necks, the large breasts upon broad torsos, and the large feet on their comparatively small bodies.










https://www.apollo-magazine.com/tarsila-do-amaral-the-mother-of-brazilian-modernism/

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