Angelo Agostini (Vercelli, Italy 1843 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1910)
caricaturist, illustrator, designer, critic, painter, recorder.
Still child moves to Paris, where Complete his drawing studies in 1858. He resides in São Paulo from 1860 onwards, and four years later, with Luís Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (1830 - 1882) and Sizenando Barreto Nabuco de Araújo (1842 - 1892), the weekly Liberal Diabo Coxo. In 1866, he created, with Américo de Campos and Antônio Manuel Reis, the weekly newspaper Cabrião, in which he publishes satire on the Paraguayan War. In addition, in this publication, the series of small articles secret instructions of the priests of the Company of Jezus, where it mocks the strategies of enrichment of the religious order, and the caricature the consolation cemetery dead, satire on the Christian holiday. This cartoon generates a great controversy developed in the pages of two other periodicals, o Diário de São Paulo e o Correio Paulistano. He moved to Rio de Janeiro and started to collaborate in the periodical o Arlequim, in 1867, and in the magazine Vida Fluminense, in 1868, which publishes for the first time the children's history of his authorship nhô Quim or impressions of a trip to the court. Between 1869 and 1875, he works as a contributor to the Mosquito revista where, in 1872, he published caricatures satirizing the screen passage of Humaitá (1868), de Victor Meirelles (1832 - 1903). In 1876, he founded A Ilustrada Magazine and, as editor, he published, in 1879, the series of caricatures Fluminese-Escola Brasileira, in which he satirizes the works sent to the salons of fine arts. In one of these caricatures, entitled offered to the eminent painter Victor Meirelles de Lima, the artist mocks the canvases Batalha dos Guararapes (1875/1879), by Victor Meirelles, E A Batalha do Avaí (1872/1877), de Pedro Américo (1843 - 1905). During the abolitionist campaign, Agostini publishes in the magazine the series of caricatures scenes of slavery, in which, referring to the steps of passion, he presents, in 14 illustrations, the various forms of torture to which they were subjected to captive blacks. In 1889 he traveled to Paris and remained there until 1895. That year he returned to Rio de Janeiro and founded the magazine dom Quixote. He works at Revista o Malho, in 1904, and is part of the founding team of Revista Infantil o Tico-Tico, in 1905.
Critical Comment
Angelo Agostini He was born in Piedmont, Italy, but soon moved to France. In Paris, he studies drawing in 1858. A year later, he follows the excursion of his mother, a lyrical singer, through Brazil, and settles in São Paulo. In this city, the young Italian begins his work with the drawing. As editor founding, in 1866, the journal o Cabrião, which despite its short duration (1866-1867), is well accepted. In this publication, the designer makes his well-known satires to the Paraguayan War and stars in one of the first controversies involving the Brazilian press: a caricature about the dead, which makes the first Cabrião the first organ of press in the country to suffer judicial proceedings.
At that time, Agostini develops his style in drawing. Unlike the other cartoonists of the time, his trait does not tend to the caricatured. The line is harsh, with academic characteristics and realistic pretensions, the cartoons present perspective techniques and seek the illusion of depth and the design tends to a rounded modeling, guaranteed by the artist's smudges. In 1868, he moved to Rio de Janeiro. This is where these academic conventions are used to create what would become the first comic book in Brazil: nhô Quim or impressions of a trip to the court. The stories are published in the magazines Vida Fluminense, o Malho e Dom Quixote. The characters are rednecks who have just arrived in the city who live at the same time with a world that is structured on the sidelines of the Court and with all sorts of entities from Brazilian rural mythology. Marco in the national press, this publication is one of the first to concretely exercise the autonomy of the press in the second reign. He does not accept sponsorships and lives from the sale of his print run. In it, Agostini publishes his famous series of caricatures of the Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891). at this moment his trait deepens realism. Despite the satirical situations, the artist seeks an almost photographic verisimilitude - in some materials, the use of the image intended to give a visual explanation to its content. A Ilustrada Magazine It engages in the abolitionist campaign and serves as a vehicle for anti-clerical and republican positions. According to Joaquim Nabuco, the "Illustrated Magazine" was the abolitionist Bible of the people who could not read". Agostini also regularly acts as an art critic in the same magazine. In his articles, he defends painters who demonstrate disagreement with the prejudices of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA. He even writes articles in defense of Pinto Bandeira (1863 - 1896), which had been refused by Aiba. It comes in passionate defense of the Grimm group. He has a large sympathy for the antischematic behavior of those landscapers.
In 1888 the artist, soon after getting Brazilian citizenship, has a daughter out of wedlock with his student Abigail de Andrade (1864 - s.d.), a fact considered a scandal. The fuss forces Agostini to move to France and move away from the edition of Illustrated magazine. no return to Brazil, at the beginning of the 1890s, the designer sells his share of the magazine, which continues to publish his works sporadically until 1898. Revista Dom Quixote, Where it also publishes the adventures of Zé Caipora. Over the years, he dedicates himself more and more to comic books. He collaborates as a cartoonist at Malho Since 1902. In 1905 the artist makes the sign of the magazine Tico-Tico, for which he writes children's stories, As A Pai João's story, published in 1906. From the 1890s onwards, as Artista Plástico participates in exhibitions more frequently. From 1901 until his death, he took part in all the general exhibitions of Fine Arts. Agostini died in 1910, is the greatest and most influential cartoonist of the Second Empire (1840-1899), with great descent over other designers such as Pereira Neto and Hilarião Teixeira.
Criticism
"Extraordinary artist, Angelo Agostini enhanced his creations with the political meaning he gave them. With its unmistakable trait, the details that the observation took but the depth and meaning of what was externalized in these details was not included in the details (...) Agostini was one of the most expressive examples of how political militancy enriches, expands and multiplies the effect of Authentic artistic creations being, still, of the most Brazilian of the artists who knew and esteemed us, because he felt, co-preceded and expressed not only what was characteristic in us, hence its authenticity, but what represents the content of the characteristic, that is, The popular, his caricatures, sometimes blunting, put the grotesque traits of the Brazilian ruling class of time to bare, his irremediable ills, his unbearable backwardness, and the sad void of the ornaments, the artifices, the guises with which he presented himself, seeking to appear greatness".
Nelson Werneck Sodré
SODRÉ, Nelson Werneck. The Empire Press. In:_____. History of the Press in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira, 1966. p. 250-251.
"His presence as a painter is quite modest, standing out above all as a designer and caricaturist. He was fierce and determined a worker for abolitionism and the republic, as a brilliant journalist and courageous. He also acted as an art critic and his name is preponderant in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo press, at the end of his second reign and in the first decades of the new republican regime".
Quirino Campofiorito
Campofiorite, Quirino. History of Brazilian painting in the 19th century. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1983. p.104.
"(...) I prefer Mr. Ângelo Agostini. painted with observation and rich in color. Ângelo Agostini is an opulent colorist. His palette has the most beautiful, the clearest, the most transparent, the purest paints. High School of Arts and Crafts, they did not excel in the design, they excelled in the beauty of paints".
Gonzaga Duque
Duque, Gonzaga. Brazilian art. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995. p. 223.
Individual exhibitions
1882 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios
Collective exhibitions
1882 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - General Exhibition of Fine Arts
1895 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 2nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1898 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 5th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1901 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1902 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 9th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1903 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 10th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA 
1904 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 11th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1905 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 12th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA 
1907 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 14th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA 
1908 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA 
1909 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
Exhibitions Posthumous
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Carnival universe: images and reflections, in the Art Gallery Collection
1982 - São Paulo SP - Italian painters in Brazil, at MAM/SP
1989 - Fortaleza CE - Brazilian art from the 19th and 20th centuries in the Ceará collections, at the Unifor Cultural Space
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nature: Four centuries of art in Brazil, at the CCBB
1994 - São Paulo SP - a critical look at the 19th century collection, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at the Bienal Foundation
Source: Itaú Cultural
