João Batista da Costa (Itaguaí RJ 1865 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1926)
João Batista da Costa was a painter, designer and teacher. He began his artistic training in 1877 at the Asilo dos Meninos Desvalidos, in Rio de Janeiro, where he studied drawing with Antônio de Souza Lobo (1840–1909). In 1885, he joined the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (Aiba), being a student of Zeferino da Costa (1840–1915), José Maria de Medeiros (1849–1925) and Rodolfo Amoedo (1857–1941). In 1894, he received the award for travel abroad at the 1st General Exhibition of Fine Arts. He traveled to Europe and, in 1897, studied with Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1912) and Tony Robert-Fleury (1837–1911) at the Académie Julian, Paris.
In 1906, he became a professor at the National School of Fine Arts (ENBA), replacing Rodolfo Amoedo in the painting chair. Among his students, Candido Portinari (1903–1962), Orlando Teruz (1902–1984) and Quirino Campofiorito (1902–1993) stand out. From 1915 to 1926, he took the direction of ENBA.
Critical Comment
Baptista da Costa is recognized as one of the great Brazilian landscape painters from the 19th to the 20th century. He is born very poor, is orphaned at the age of 8 and spends time living with relatives. He cannot adapt and flees to Rio de Janeiro in 1873. He lives in the asylum for helpless minors, where he learns music, binding and drawing. Professor Antônio de Souza Lobo observes his aptitude and encourages him to continue his studies in the arts, obtaining his entry into the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA, in 1885, with the support of Ambrósio Leitão da Cunha (1825 - 1898) - the Baron of Mamoré. At Aiba, Baptista da Costa learns painting with Zeferino da Costa and then with Rodolfo Amoedo, from whom he attends classes until he graduated in 1889. Neoclassical to a more realistic one. This process accompanies, in a way, the change from the Second Reign to the Republic, from Aiba to the National School of Fine Arts - ENBA. The paintings began to deal with less grandiloquent themes, with milder situations and a harmonious and descriptive composition.
In 1890, the painter shows his works for the first time at the General Exhibition of Fine Arts. About four years later, he paints the canvas at rest (ca.1894). In the painting of this rural scene, the predominance of the environment over the figure denounces the greatest interest of Baptista da Costa in the landscape. With her, the artist wins the award for traveling abroad at the 1st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, in 1894, and moved to France in 1896. There he attends the painting classes by Tony-Robert Fleury (1837 - 1912) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836 - 1912), at the Académie Julian. During the European stay, the artist knows Germany and Italy. Returning to Brazil in 1898, very bitter, after losing his first wife.
On his return, the artist starts to exhibit annually in national salons, receives second-class gold medal in 1900, first class in 1904 and the great medal of gold in 1908. In 1906, he was invited by Aiba to replace Rodolfo Amoedo in the coordination of the painting studio. At that moment, his work progressively eliminates the characters and starts to deal with the description of the rural landscape. The production of Baptista da Costa is vast and consists of important paintings of genre scenes and portraits such as João Gomes do Rego and Dom Pedro II, but it is in landscape painting that it is consecrated.
The increasing dedication to the landscape is simultaneous with its approach of procedures for direct observation of the Brazilian scene. Baptista da Costa portrays the rural landscape without the romantic ecstasy of Antônio Parreiras (1860 - 1937). It avoids the idealizations of previous academic painters, seeking, on canvas such as Lent, a contemplative relationship with Brazilian nature. Although there are similarities of procedure and poetics with French artists such as the members of the Barbizon School and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796 - 1875), it can be said that Baptista da Costa is more restrained. It composes panoramas of a varied nature, but avoids unequal relationships and strong contrasts. The landscapes are harmonious and serene, everything appears welcoming and pacified.
In 1915 the artist is honored with two honors. An artistic one: the Medal of Honor of the 22nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts. The other is his election as director of ENBA, a position he holds until the end of his life without ceasing to direct the painting studio. In this function, Baptista da Costa forms many disciples in landscape painting, such as Levino Fanzeres (1884 - 1956), Francisco Manna (1879 - 1943) and Vicente Leite (1900 - 1941). Despite not accepting modernism, which he thought was Cabotino and Anarchic, Baptista da Costa was important in the training of painters close to the vanguard languages, such as Candido Portinari and Manoel Santiago (1897 - 1987).
Criticism
"After vines, the most famous landscaper of the generation that succeeded him is a baptist on the coast.
colored, however, it was revealed by the sensitivity and lightness of the touch, an excellent cultivator of the genre. He is the very delicate painter of the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro and the gardens of Petrópolis. Baptista da Costa is always happy in the effects and combinations of light and shadow. Brief brushstroke, calm, self-assured, manages to convey with sweetness and poetry the softness of the penumbra underneath the grove, the freshness of the greens of the soft grass, which extends to the bank of the streams and dresses our parks tropical".
Ronald de Carvalho
Rubens, Carlos. Life and glory of Baptista da Coast. Preface Henrique Salvio. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Society of Fine Arts, 1947. p. 102.
"(...) It was undoubtedly among Brazilian painters, the one that best managed to capture the essence of the natural beauties of our landscape, the placidity of the river currents and the luxuriant tone of the vegetation. Smooth landscapes can be seen from the influence of the Romantic School (which had in Corot, Europe, the greatest exponent), the Barbizon School and, mainly, the romantic realism of the second half of the 19th century. Nature has become the favorite model for realistic painters; the way The grandiloquent of the academies was avoided, thus emerging a certain simplicity free from pieguism. Such characteristics, although in their evolution have something negative, they allowed to expressly express the nature of the time (...) Baptista da Costa can be considered, for its acting, as an eminently lyrical landscaper, one of the most Brazilian of our painters of the period. It is possible that there has never been, before or after him, another artist who so sincerely knew in his works to praise the bucolic charms of the Brazilian landscape".
Nagib Francisco
Francisco, Nagib. João Batista da Costa: 1865-1926. Preface Carlos Roberto Maciel Levy; Presentation Alcídio Mafra de Souza. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1984. p. 56-58.
"(...) Baptista da Costa was not a painter of remarkable technical expansiveness, of emotional denunciations, because this did not fit his retracted, apparently humble temperament, but endowed with confidence in doing consciously and with firm persistence (...) he serenely built his personal language and with it he expanded the pictorial communication he desired and in which he pronounced with particular eloquence. Preferably, his landscapes were particularly criticized by critics and disputed by collectors, making school (...)".
Quirino Campofiorito
Francisco, Nagib. João Batista da Costa: 1865-1926. Preface Carlos Roberto Maciel Levy; Presentation Alcídio Mafra de Souza. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1984. p. 51-52.
"His work is imposed on those who have the necessary cultivation of art, to those endowed with aesthetic instincts and to the delicate ones of taste. It seeks to deceive artifices. It has, as the nature of its author, the sincerity of simplicity, the strength of itself, the restraint of its processes of expression, which derives from the timidity, the modesty of the one who produced it (...) Revolutions will not stir up a time, but have, on those who achieve the easy triumphs of fashion, the merit of those who cross generations and are at any time admired and well loved". Nagib. João Batista da Costa: 1865-1926. Preface Carlos Roberto Maciel Levy; Presentation Alcídio Mafra de Souza. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1984. p. 77.
"Long loyalty to the landscape, on the contrary, gives a unique place to João Baptista da Costa in the panorama of the end of the century. In flood, at the Pampulha Museum of Belo Horizonte - , of the domain of the craft that allows him to build, with the diverse ranges of his greens, the space and light of atmospheres at the same time true and full of an idyllic sense of life and Campos.
In Lent, this small corot of Brazilian painting is the poet of life on the farm and the forests, of the simple scenes that speak of the intimacy of family affections having the field by frame. agrarian bourgeoisie on the rise and of laborious professionals, in which the rush of the city is forgotten and the roots of rural Brazil are reunited.
Luciano Migliaccio
Rediscovery Show, 2000, São Paulo. 19th century art. Nelson Aguilar Organization, Suzanna Sassoun. Presentation Edemar Cid Ferreira. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 years Visual Arts, 2000. p. 185.
Testimonies
"I owe my artistic career to an act of independent rebellion: fleeing the night of my relatives' house in the countryside, when orphaned by father and mother: sleeping in the Mata; introducing me after several phases of my life, between the ages of eight and twelve, to the director of the Asilo de Boys Desvalidos, in person, asking for my admission to this house, where I educated myself, enrolling me at the Academy of Fine Arts, by order of the Barão de Mamoré, when minister of the Empire, but with courage and haughtiness; brought to the performance of the position, to fill all the gaps that could exist, my ability to work, my common sense that never abandoned me, the love of my profession, and, above all, the fixed idea of do something for the art of our Brazil".
Baptista da Costa
Rubens, Carlos. Life and glory of Baptista da Coast. Preface Henrique Salvio. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Society of Fine Arts, 1947. p. 133-134.
Individual exhibitions
1892 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - First individual, at Enba
1894 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, at Clube do Hipódromo National
1899 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, in the postal house
1910 - Belém PA - Individual, at the Theater of Peace
1925 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at Galeria Jorge
Exhibitions Collectives
1890 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - General Exhibition of Fine Arts, ENBA - Honorable Mention
1894 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA - Travel Award Exterior
1895 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 2nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1896 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 3rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1899 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1900 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA - 2nd Class Gold Medal
1902 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 9th General Exhibition of Belas Artes, 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 - 1st Gold Medal Class
1905 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 12th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1906 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 13th 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 - Great Gold Medal
1909 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th Exhibition General of Fine Arts, at Enba
1910 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1911 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 18th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1911 - São Paulo SP - First Brazilian Exhibition of Fine Arts, at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios
1912 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 19th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1912 - São Paulo SP - Second Brazilian Exhibition of Fine Arts, at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios
1913 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 20th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1914 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 21st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, in the ENBA
1915 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 22nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA - Medal of Honor
1916 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 23rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1917 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 24th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1918 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 25th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1919 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 26th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1920 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 27th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1921 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 28th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, ENBA
1922 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 29th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1923 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 30th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1924 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 30th General Exhibition of Fine Arts January RJ - 31st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1925 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 32nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
Postomatic exhibitions
1926 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Baptista da Costa: Retrospective, at Enba
1940 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective Exhibition: Works of the Great Masters of Painting and His Disciples
1946 - São Paulo SP - 12th Salão Paulista de Belas Arts, at the Prestes Maia Gallery
1948 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective of painting in Brazil, at MNBA
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A century of Brazilian painting: 1850-1950, in the MNBA
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd São Paulo International Biennial, at the State Pavilion
1956 - São Paulo SP - 50 years of Brazilian landscape, at MAM/SP
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, in the MNBA
1970 - São Paulo SP - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo 1970, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1974 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - O Mar, at the IBEU Gallery Copacabana
1977 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Aspects of the Brazilian landscape: 1816-1916, at MNBA
1980 - São Paulo SP - The Brazilian landscape: 1650-1976, at Paço das Arts
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - 100 works Itaú, at Masp
1986 - São Paulo SP - Nineteenth: a turn in the century, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1987 - São Paulo SP - Brazil painted by national and foreign masters: 18th - 20th centuries, at Masp
1988 - São Paulo SP - Brasiliana: The man and the land, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1989 - Fortaleza CE - Brazilian art of the 19th and 20th centuries in the collections of Ceará: paintings and drawings, at the Unifor Cultural Space
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio de Janeiro de Machado de Assis, at CCBB
1989 - São Paulo SP - Painting Brazil 19th century: works from the Banco Itaú collection, in Itaugaleria
1990 - São Paulo SP - the art collection of the municipality of São Paulo, in the MASP
1991 - São Paulo SP - Desire in the Academy: 1847-1916, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1992 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nature: Four centuries of art in Brazil, at the CCBB
1993 - Santos SP - Six great painters, at Pinacoteca Benedito Calixto
1994 - São Paulo SP - A critical look at the 19th century collection, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1995 - Campinas SP - from the Navy à Still life, at the Center for Informatics and Culture II
1998 - São Paulo SP - São Paulo iconography in private collections, at the Museu da Casa Brasileira
2000 - Porto Alegre RS - From Frans Post to Eliseu Visconti: Collection National Museum of Fine Arts - RJ, at Margs
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2001 - São Paulo SP - Aldo Franco Collection, at Pinacoteca do State
2001 - São Paulo SP - Trajectory of light in Brazilian art, at Itaú Cultural
2002 - Brasília DF - Barão do Rio Branco: his work and his time, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Itamaraty Palace
Source: Itaú Cultural
