Angelo Agostini (Vercelli, Italy 1843 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1910)
Caricaturist, illustrator, draftsman, critic, painter, printmaker.
As a child, he moved to Paris, where he completed his drawing studies in 1858. He lived in São Paulo from 1860, and four years later founded, with Luís Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (1830 - 1882) and Sizenando Barreto Nabuco de Araújo (1842 - 1892), the liberal weekly Diabo Coxo. In 1866, with Américo de Campos and Antônio Manuel Reis, he created the weekly newspaper O Cabrião, in which he published satires on the Paraguayan War. Also noteworthy in this publication are the series of short articles Instruções Secretas dos Padres da Companhia de Jezus [Secret Instructions of the Priests of the Society of Jesus], in which he mocks the religious order's strategies for enrichment, and the caricature O Cemitério da Consolação em Dia de Finados [Consolação Cemetery on All Souls' Day], a satire on the Christian holiday. This cartoon sparked a major controversy that played out in the pages of two other periodicals, O Diário de São Paulo and the Correio Paulistano. He moved to Rio de Janeiro and began contributing to the periodical O Arlequim in 1867, and to the magazine Vida Fluminense in 1868, which first published his children's story Nhô Quim ou Impressões de uma Viagem à Corte [Nhô Quim, or Impressions of a Journey to the Court]. Between 1869 and 1875, he worked as a contributor to the magazine O Mosquito, where, in 1872, he published a caricature satirizing the canvas Passagem de Humaitá [The Passage of Humaitá] (1868), by Victor Meirelles (1832 - 1903). In 1876, he founded the Revista Ilustrada and, as editor, published in 1879 the series of caricatures Salão Fluminense-Escola Brazileira, in which he satirizes the works submitted to the fine arts salons. In one of these caricatures, titled Oferecido ao Eminente Pintor Victor Meirelles de Lima [Offered to the Eminent Painter Victor Meirelles de Lima], the artist mocks the canvases Batalha dos Guararapes [Battle of Guararapes] (1875/1879), by Victor Meirelles, and A Batalha do Avaí [The Battle of Avaí] (1872/1877), by Pedro Américo (1843 - 1905). During the abolitionist campaign, Agostini published in the magazine the series of caricatures Cenas da Escravidão [Scenes of Slavery], in which, referencing the Stations of the Cross, he presents, in 14 illustrations, various forms of torture inflicted on enslaved Black people. In 1889, he traveled to Paris, where he remained until 1895. That year he returned to Rio de Janeiro and founded the magazine Dom Quixote. He worked for the magazine O Malho in 1904, and was part of the founding team of the children's magazine O Tico-Tico in 1905.
Critical Commentary
Angelo Agostini was born in Piedmont, Italy, but soon moved to France. In Paris, he studied drawing in 1858. A year later, he accompanied his mother, an opera singer, on a tour of Brazil and settled in São Paulo. In this city, the young Italian began his work in drawing. As editor, he founded the periodical O Cabrião in 1866, which, despite its short run (1866-1867), was well received. In this publication, the draftsman produced his well-known satires on the Paraguayan War and was at the center of one of the first controversies involving the Brazilian press: a caricature about All Souls' Day, which made O Cabrião the first press outlet in the country to face legal proceedings.
During this period, Agostini developed his drawing style. Unlike other cartoonists of the time, his line does not tend toward caricature. The line is firm, with academic characteristics and realist ambitions; the cartoons employ perspective techniques and seek the illusion of depth, and the drawing tends toward rounded modeling, achieved through the artist's use of the stump. In 1868, he moved to Rio de Janeiro. There he used these academic conventions to create what would become the first comic strip in Brazil: Nhô Quim ou Impressões de uma Viagem à Corte. The stories were published in the magazines Vida Fluminense, O Malho and Dom Quixote. The characters are country folk newly arrived in the city who live both with a world taking shape on the margins of the court and with all sorts of beings from Brazilian rural mythology.
In 1876, the artist founded the Revista Ilustrada. A landmark of the Brazilian press, this publication was one of the first to exercise press independence in practice during the Second Reign. It accepted no sponsorship and lived off the sale of its print run. In it, Agostini published his famous series of caricatures of Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891). At this point, his line deepened its realism. Despite the satirical situations, the artist sought an almost photographic verisimilitude - in some articles, the image was meant to provide a visual explanation of their content. The Revista Ilustrada joined the abolitionist campaign and served as a vehicle for anticlerical and republican positions. According to Joaquim Nabuco, the "Revista Ilustrada was the abolitionist Bible of the people who could not read". Agostini also worked regularly as an art critic in the same magazine. In his articles, he defended painters who disagreed with the prejudices of the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes - Aiba. He even wrote articles in defense of Pinto Bandeira (1863 - 1896), who had been rejected by Aiba. He passionately defended the artists of the Grimm Group, and felt great sympathy for the anti-formulaic attitude of those landscape painters.
In 1888, shortly after obtaining Brazilian citizenship, the artist had a daughter out of wedlock with his student Abigail de Andrade (1864 - n.d.), which was considered a scandal. The uproar forced Agostini to move to France and step away from editing the Revista Ilustrada. On his return to Brazil, in the early 1890s, the draftsman sold his share in the Revista, which continued to publish his work sporadically until 1898. He then founded the magazine Dom Quixote, where he also published As Aventuras de Zé Caipora [The Adventures of Zé Caipora]. Over the years, he devoted himself increasingly to comics. He contributed as a cartoonist to O Malho from 1902. In 1905, the artist designed the masthead of the magazine O Tico-Tico, for which he wrote children's stories such as A História do Pai João [The Story of Pai João], published in 1906. From the 1890s on, as a visual artist, he took part in exhibitions more frequently. From 1901 until his death, he participated in every Exposição Geral de Belas Artes. Agostini died in 1910. He was the greatest and most influential cartoonist of the Second Reign (1840-1889), with great influence over other draftsmen such as Pereira Neto and Hilarião Teixeira.
Critiques
"An extraordinary artist, Angelo Agostini ennobled his creations with the political meaning he gave them. No one wielded the pencil as a weapon at the level and with the effectiveness of this meticulous illustrator, who captured with his unmistakable line not only the details that observation gathered but the depth and significance of what was expressed in those details (...) Agostini was one of the most expressive examples of how political militancy enriches, broadens and multiplies the effect of authentic artistic creations, being, moreover, one of the most Brazilian of the artists who knew us and held us in esteem, because he felt, understood and expressed not only what was characteristic of us, hence his authenticity, but what represents the content of the characteristic, that is, the popular. His caricatures, at times scathing, laid bare the grotesque traits of the Brazilian ruling class of the time, its irremediable ills, its unbearable backwardness, and the sad emptiness of the ornaments, artifices and disguises with which it presented itself, seeking to appear grand".
Nelson Werneck Sodré
SODRÉ, Nelson Werneck. A Imprensa do Império. In:______. História da Imprensa no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira, 1966. p. 250-251.
"His presence as a painter is quite modest; he stands out above all as a draftsman and caricaturist. He was a fierce and determined worker for Abolition and the Republic, as a brilliant and courageous journalist. He also worked as an art critic, and his name was preeminent in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo press at the end of the Second Reign and in the first decades of the new republican regime".
Quirino Campofiorito
CAMPOFIORITO, Quirino. História da pintura brasileira no século XIX. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1983. p.104.
"(...) As a portraitist of faces, I prefer Mr. Ângelo Agostini. His portraits are detailed, mannered, but painted with observation and rich in color. Ângelo Agostini is an opulent colorist. His palette has the most beautiful, the brightest, the most transparent, the purest paints. The small paintings he exhibited in 1882 at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios did not excel in drawing; they excelled in the beauty of their colors".
Gonzaga Duque
DUQUE, Gonzaga. A Arte Brasileira. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995. p. 223.
Solo Exhibitions
1882 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Liceu de Artes e Ofícios
Group 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
Posthumous Exhibitions
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Universe of Carnival: Images and Reflections, at Acervo Galeria de Arte
1982 - São Paulo SP - Italian Painters in Brazil, at MAM/SP
1989 - Fortaleza CE - Brazilian Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Ceará Collections, at Espaço Cultural da Unifor
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nature: Four Centuries of Art in Brazil, at CCBB
1994 - São Paulo SP - A Critical Look at the 19th-Century Collection, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
Source: Itaú Cultural
