João Timótheo da Costa (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1879 - idem 1932)
Painter, decorator, printmaker.
In 1894, he began his artistic training at the Casa da Moeda [Mint] in Rio de Janeiro, where he met its director, Enes de Souza, who became his patron. At the same time, he enrolled at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes - Enba [National School of Fine Arts], where he studied drawing with Bérard and painting with Rodolfo Amoedo, and attended life-drawing classes taught by Zeferino da Costa. In 1910, he left for Paris. He worked with the group of Brazilian artists hired by the government to decorate the Brazilian Pavilion at the Turin International Exhibition, held in that Italian city in 1911. In 1920, with his brother Arthur Timótheo da Costa, he produced the first of a series of decorative panels for the Fluminense Futebol Clube, completing the commission on his own in 1924. In 1925, he executed five vaulted panels to decorate the Salão Nobre [Grand Hall] of the Chamber of Deputies, now the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and that same year produced another series of decorative panels for the salon of the Copacabana Palace. Having taken part in several editions of the Salão Nacional de Belas Artes [National Salon of Fine Arts], he received the small gold medal in 1926. In 1930, he was committed to the Hospício dos Alienados [Asylum for the Insane] in Rio de Janeiro, where he died two years later.
Critical Commentary
João Timótheo da Costa came from a humble family. From the age of 15, he worked as an apprentice at the Casa da Moeda in Rio de Janeiro, an institution that employed and encouraged other young artists, among them his brother Arthur Timótheo da Costa, Rodolfo Chambelland and Eugênio Latour. At the same time, he enrolled at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes - Enba, where he studied drawing with Bérard, life drawing with Zeferino da Costa and painting with Rodolfo Amoedo. In 1910, he joined the group of Brazilian artists who, in Paris, were responsible for decorating the pavilion for the Turin Exhibition, in Italy, held the following year. This work allowed him to visit European museums, where he discovered impressionist and divisionist works, as well as the decorative paintings of the French artist Puvis de Chavannes (1824 - 1898), which left their mark on his career.
He structures his compositions through color, in broad brushstrokes in which the artist's gesture can be perceived. He works the paint with both palette knife and brush, achieving heavy impasto. His pictures, especially the seascapes, stand out for their subtle, highly controlled luminosity. In Porto [Harbor] (1920) he shows sensitivity in the use of color; his brushwork suggests volumes and distances, and he explores the interplay between solid forms (boats, buildings) and their colored reflections in the water. In some works he comes close to photographic framing, as in Recanto de Atelier [Studio Corner] (1926) or Portal (n.d.). In Retrato de Artur [Portrait of Artur] (n.d.) he depicts his brother painting outdoors, with great formal simplification. The sitter's figure seems cut out from the background, in which nature is merely suggested in loose brushstrokes. João Timótheo's paintings share affinities with his brother's, in subject matter and also in handling, but compared with them they show a tendency to give the paint the spontaneity of a sketch.
Overcoming the difficulties faced by so many Black painters or painters of African descent, João Timótheo received several commissions for decorative paintings. In his decorations he applies the principle of broken color and the juxtaposition of colors, inspired by Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891). The rhythmic use of line and the palette of subdued tones reveal his appreciation of the work of Puvis de Chavannes. Some of his decorative paintings have not survived.
The insanity of his brother, who died prematurely in 1920, and the death of his daughter at the age of 6 dealt the artist severe blows from which he never fully recovered, and he died, like his brother, in the Hospício dos Alienados, in 1932. Working in the early 20th century, his work reveals, like that of other contemporary artists, the eclectic atmosphere created by the belated impact of aesthetic trends such as impressionism and post-impressionism. João Timótheo's output is of great artistic quality and covers every genre of painting: portraits, history painting, genre scenes and above all landscapes, which have a particularly poetic feeling.
Collections
Acervo da Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo/Brasil - São Paulo SP
Fundação Museu Carlos Costa Pinto - Salvador BA
Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA - Rio de Janeiro RJ
Critiques
"João Timotheo da Costa was an exceptional artist. His painting impresses with the sureness of its line and the solidity of its construction. He knows how to see and executes deliberately. Widely read and familiar with the art world, he puts forward his ideas with boldness and conviction".
Carlos Rubens
RUBENS, Carlos. Pequena história das artes plásticas no Brasil. São Paulo: Nacional, 1941.
"The painter João Timotheo tends to chart the course of his life under the motto of art for art's sake, even though the sentimental affection of his spirit, without his realizing it, constantly diverts him from that exact measure and direction. And we say without his realizing it because, deep down, Mr. João Timotheo would like to be like that, although, on the contrary, to anyone who probes his inner self he appears as nature formed him, little modified by social factors. Truly, this fine artist, who sometimes tries to seem skeptical, is in fact a man who lives by the heart, who in his youth devoted himself to a true cult of his brother and who today has white hair out of longing for his daughter. He is thus a sentimental man struggling with various moral factors, an individuality very different from the one he believes himself to be, and this difference consists of a certain measure of beauty that makes him a beloved artist among his fellow artists. His is a temperament with incongruities, in the loftiest sense of the expression. He is sincere in expressing his thoughts, sometimes careless, but incapable of treachery".
Angione Costa
PRIMORES da pintura no Brasil. Francisco Acquarone; A. de Queiroz Vieira. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro, s. ed. , 1942.
Group Exhibitions
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 - honorable mention
1907 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 14th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba - honorable mention
1908 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1911 - Turin (Italy) - Turin International Exhibition
1912 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 19th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1913 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 20th 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
1919 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio Exhibition of Printmaking and Etching
1920 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 27th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1921 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 28th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1923 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 30th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1926 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 33rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1926 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Salon d'Automne - gold medal
1927 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 34th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1928 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 35th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1929 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 36th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
Posthumous Exhibitions
1979 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Nineteenth-Century Brazilian and European Paintings, at Maurício Pontual Galeria de Arte
1983 - São Paulo SP - History of 19th-Century Brazilian Painting, at Paço das Artes
1988 - São Paulo SP - The Afro-Brazilian Hand, at MAM/SP
1989 - Fortaleza CE - Brazilian Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Ceará Collections, at Espaço Cultural da Unifor
1993 - São Paulo SP - Pintores Negros do Século XIX [Black Painters of the 19th Century], at Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2012 - São Paulo SP - Os Dois Irmãos João e Arthur Timótheo da Costa: Pré-Modernistas Brasileiros [The Two Brothers João and Arthur Timótheo da Costa: Brazilian Pre-Modernists], at Museu Afro Brasil
Source: Itaú Cultural
