Anna Mariani (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1935)
Photographer.
Anna Helena Mariani Bittencourt studied photography with Claude Kubrusly, Cristiano Mascaro (1944- ) and Maureen Bisilliat (1931- ). From the 1970s onwards, he traveled to the Bahian Recôncavo and documents the landscape, cultural manifestations and women's work in traditional activities. It becomes known mainly for the photographs of facades and details of the architecture of popular dwellings, which it has made since 1976, when publishing the books Paintings and Platibanda, in 1987, and Façades, in 1988. front, without the presence of the human element and without the interference of the landscape. In 1992, he publishes Landscapes, Impressions - the Brazilian semi-arid region, in which he brings together photographs of northeastern landscapes carried out over three decades, which record the scarcity of resources and also the diversity of forms of vegetation and landscapes of these places.
Critical Comment
With a work that is not restricted to simple documentation, Anna Mariani has been dedicated since the early 1970s to photographing architecture, culture, fauna and flora, landscape and everyday life. in the Northeast region of Brazil. He studies photography with Claude Kubrusly, Cristiano Mascaro (1944-) and Maureen Bisilliat (1931-). In 1969 he began to register the Recôncavo Baiano using only a P&B film. Carioca by birth, the artist lives in Salvador during her childhood, getting to know the region well. The first fruit of his incursion into the Northeast is exposed in 1972, in São Paulo, in a show that brings the Northeastern woman in her traditional crafts: clay burning, preparation of manioc flour and tobacco, manufacture of sisal and piiaçava.
In 1976 Mariani "discovers" what is her theme for about 11 years: the facades and platibandas of popular houses. The reason appears after a trip made to record the journey of Antônio Conselheiro, in which he uses a color film for the first time, and this architecture is revealed in all its diversity and creativity through color. From then on, he undertakes several excursions to coastal cities and the sertão of the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe in search of this poetic universe of popular master builders. In 1987, it has a collection of more than 2,000 photographs, which he decides to put in a book. Selects 220 photos and publishes the volume Paintings and Platibandas, with comments by the writer Ariano Suassuna (1927- ) and the architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992).1
The book is released at 19th São Paulo International Biennial with an exhibition of 80 photographic enlargements. The images stand out for the fragile glow of the colors that sensitively reproduce the lime painting of these facades without threshing floors or borders, their elaborate platibandas decorated with geometric, floral and zoomorphic motifs that reveal signs of various cultures, such as the African and the Oriental. Recovered naked, frontally, without human presence, these photos find beauty in the simplicity of architectural solutions in the interior of the Brazilian Northeast.
The pursuit of beauty amid adverse conditions, but without aestheticizing poverty, it is one of the characteristics of Anna's work. Mariani. In landscapes, impressions: the Brazilian semi-arid (1992), the artist brings together photos of northeastern landscapes carried out in three decades (1970-1990). In these images, the contrasts between different forms of scarcity (soil and food) and some riches (small strips of vegetation, plantations or solitary houses in extremely arid regions) are, in their words, "a tribute to the sertanejo present in the cultivated lands, houses, fences and paths". Landscapes, impressions: the Brazilian semi-arid region. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992. 107 p., photos color.
Criticism
"Anna Mariani's photos represent a happy union between the documentary and plastic resources of the photograph. humble, but do not seek an impact on easy realism. They always portray the facades from the same angle - from the front - without interference from the landscape or the human element and with absolute technical clarity. (...) The fascination of work is, first, in the variety of shapes and colors that emerge when Observing one photograph after another, in an imposing sequence of variations on the same theme. Second, in the discovery of surprising relationships between modern art and the houses portrayed.
The elegant lines of the art deco, sometimes dry, sometimes sinuous, for example, can be found on facades of two mountains, in Bahia, or by Deumiro Gouveia, in Alagoas, in decorative details without practical function. In Bola, in Paraíba, and in Belo Jardim, in Pernambuco, facades with the geometry of vivid colors, one of the main currents of abstract art, They are reminiscent of the works of the Dutch Pieter Mondrian, one of their most expressive names. In several cities, the little flags that for decades have been an inspiration to the painter Alfredo Volpi, one of the great names of Brazilian art, are reproduced in doors and windows. The presence of such elements is unusual if it is considered that the builders of these houses have never heard of the Art Déco movement do not even know who Mondrian was or what Alfredo Volpi did. Galvâo, João Cândido. [text] In.: SOUZA, Okky De. Through the front door. See, São Paulo, No. 995, 30 Sep. 1987.
"They are images very original, obtained from the results of a popular craft, that of the masters of works in the interior, who resist any classification. (...) The photographs have no surroundings: they are basically graphic.
A work that is essentially based on color, when treating the facades of their images as engravings".
Wagner Carelli
Carelli, Wagner, a country art beyond the clichés Folha de S. Paulo, Oct. 21, 1987.
''A breeze never revisits the same plant'; The landscape of the sertão is not uniform. Its transformation is radical between the rainy season and the serene drought. The photos try to record this cosmic moment. There is, mainly, the silence of eternity in these records, only interrupted by the 'strident maritacas' of this landscape that Euclides da Cunha classified as 'glacial' in 'Os Sertões'.
The photos do not persecute The spectacular, but they were gathered to tell a story, build a poetics about the transitory".
Antonio Gonçalves Filho
GONÇALVES FILHO, Antônio. Photographer follows a new trail in the sertão. Folha de S. Paulo, May 28, 1992.
Captures
Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs - São Paulo SP
G. B. Silverman Collection - Detroit (States) United States)
São Paulo Museum of Modern Art - MAM/SP - São Paulo SP
Individual exhibitions
1974 - São Paulo SP - Women, House of Farinha and Piaçava, Galeria Enfoco
1979 - São Paulo SP - Journey to Brejões, Galeria Espaço Novo
1984 - São Paulo SP - Caatinga, Arco Gallery
1988 - Paris (France) - Des Maisons Comme des Tableaux: Habitat Populaire du Nordeste Au Bresil, at the Center Georges Pompidou. Musée National d'Art Moderne. Center de Création Industrielle
1988 - Paris (France) - Façades, Galerie Fnac
1989 - Helsinki (Finland) - Bahian Talot, Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo
1990 - Arhus (Denmark) - Facader, Arkitektskolen Aarhus
1990 - Berlin (Germany) - Fassaden, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
1990 - Copenhagen (Denmark) - Facader, Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning
1990 - Stuttgart (Germany) - Fassaden: Nordost-Brasilien, Institut Fur Auslandsbeziehungen/Forum Fur Kulturaustauch
1992 - Fortaleza CE - Landscapes, Impressions: The Brazilian semi-arid region
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Anna Mariani: Paintings and Platibandas, Fundação Casa França-Brasil
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Landscapes, Impressions: The Brazilian semi-arid, Casa do Bispo
1992 - São Paulo SP - Landscapes, Impressions: The Brazilian semi-arid, MAC/USP
1993 - Poços de Caldas MG Participant Artist - Landscapes, Impressions: The Brazilian semi-arid, Casa da Cultura
1993 - Salvador BA - Paintings and Platibandas, City Museum
1993 - São Paulo SP - Small photographic journey under the eyes of Frans Post, from Zona da Mata to Sertão, Pinacoteca do Estado
1994 - Curitiba PR - Paintings and Platibandas, PUCPR
1995 - Copenhagen (Denmark) - Brasilianske Landskaber, Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning
2010 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Anna Mariani: Paintings and Platibandas, Instituto Moreira Salles
2010 - São Paulo SP - Anna Mariani: Paintings and Platibandas, Instituto Moreira Salles
Collective exhibitions
1972 - São Paulo SP - Eucatexpo
1980 - São Paulo SP - 1st Photography Triennale, Museum of Modern Art - Acquisition Award
1981 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Fotografie Lateinamerika von 1860 Bis Heute, Kunshaus Zürich
1985 - São Paulo SP - 1st Quadrennial of Photography, Mam Ibirapuera
1987 - São Paulo SP - 19th International Biennial of São Paulo. Special Room Paintings and Platibandas, Biennial Foundation
1988 - Berlin (Germany) - Brasilianische Kunst in Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle
1988 - New York (United States) - Brazil Projects, P.S.1, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc.
1989 - Amsterdam (Holland) - U-ABC, Stedelijk Museum
1989 - London (United Kingdom) - Color in Context, Serpentine Gallery
1990 - Fortaleza CE - Collective, at the University of Ceará Museum
1990 - Lisbon (Portugal) - U-ABC, José de Azeredo Perdigão
1991 - Olinda PE - 1616 - Frans Post - 1991, at MAC/PE
1991 - São Paulo SP - A Mata, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo
1993 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Photography: 50s to 90s, Sesc Pompéia
1994 - London (United Kingdom) - Hidden View: images of Bahia, Brazil, Concourse Gallery
1994 - São Paulo SP - 20th Century Biennial, Bienal Foundation
1994 - São Paulo SP - 4th Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs, São Paulo Museum of Art
1995 - Belo Horizonte MG - The heirs of Night: Fragments of the Black Imaginary, Belo Horizonte Culture Center
1995 - Paris (France) - Forêts du Monde, Forêt des Hommes, Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle
1996 - Bogotá (Colombia) - Images of Brazil. Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection, Casa do Brasil
1996 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Images from Brazil. Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1996 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp photo collection, Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas Sofía Imber
1996 - Rochester (United States) - Margins and Sertões, audiovisual with music by Antônio Nóbrega, opening of the exhibition The Thinking Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology
1996 - São Paulo SP - The Citizen and the Body: the search and reconquest of human patterns of movement,  SESC Pompeii
1996 - São Paulo SP - 4th Studio UNESP SESC SENAI on Image Technologies, Social Service of Commerce
1998 - Brasília DF - Brazilians like me, like me?, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1999 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Me, like who?, Brazilian Art Museum. Cultural Hall
2000 - Hannover (Germany) - Céu do Brasil, in the Pavilion of Brazil
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - O Bardi dos Artistas, Centro Cultural Correios
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil in white and black: 50 photographs from the MAM collection, MAMSP
2000 - São Paulo SP - O Bardi dos Artistas, Galeria Marta Traba
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Canudos, at the Moreira Salles Institute
2002 - sao paulo sp stock pictures, pictures, pictures in the collection of the museum of modern art of sao paulo, mam
2004 - são paulo sp - song of the day, memorial of Latin America
2006 - São Paulo SP - Casas do Brasil, Museu da Casa Brazilian
Source: Itaú Cultural
