Manoel Santiago (Manaus AM 1897 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1987)
Painter, draftsman, teacher.
Manoel Colafante Caledônio de Assumpção Santiago moves to Belém in 1903 and begins studying painting. In 1919 he moves to Rio de Janeiro, where he studies law while attending the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes - Enba, as a student of Rodolfo Chambelland and Baptista da Costa. At that time, he takes private lessons with Eliseu Visconti. In 1925 he marries the painter Haydeá Santiago. In 1927 he takes part in the Salão Nacional de Belas Artes - SNBA and wins the foreign travel prize. He goes to Paris the following year and remains there for five years. Back in Rio de Janeiro in 1932, he becomes a teacher at the Instituto de Belas Artes. In 1934, he begins teaching painting and drawing at the Núcleo Bernardelli, where his students include José Pancetti, Edson Motta, Bustamante Sá, Ado Malagoli, Rescála and Milton Dacosta.
Critical Commentary
Early in his career, Manoel Santiago paints female nudes and works on themes linked to the indigenous legends of the Amazon, executed with a luminous, Impressionist-inspired palette and loose brushwork. His work shows an affinity with that of his wife, Haydeá Santiago, although her output has a more intimate character, with themes related to genre scenes.
Manoel Santiago depicts the landscape of Rio de Janeiro in countless canvases. The critic Angyone Costa, in a 1932 article, praises his work, stating that the light of certain misty days in Rio had never had a better interpreter, with the exception of Eliseu Visconti.1 In Alto Teresópolis, 1947, what stands out is the refined use of color and a light that transfigures the landscape, as well as the use of thick brushstrokes.
In their structure, some of his canvases recall the work of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, as in Pescador [Fisherman], 1960s, in which he explores the effects of light on the rough bark of the tree in the foreground. In later works, his use of color becomes freer, as in the coastal landscapes of Maranhão and Paraíba, 1980s.
Notes
1 Quoted in MORAIS, Frederico. Núcleo Bernardelli: arte brasileira nos anos 30 e 40. Rio de Janeiro: Pinakotheke, 1982, p. 79.
Critiques
"Santiago, a vigorous artistic temperament and a well-defined personality. The landscape, the main piece of his contribution, is a museum piece. Were Santiago not on the jury, it would be an injustice not to acquire it. He is, above all, a great landscape painter. So much so that he treats the figure in his portraits as if it were landscape. In his hands, the human figure takes on a landscape character, since, although he is an excellent draftsman, drawing and aerial perspective, as well as linear perspective, which give a sense of breadth, are almost absent. His portraits lack volume; they are modulated by tonal chords. A tree, the sea or a human face receive the same treatment, the poetic, exuberant sense of style always prevailing over the psychological sense, the intimate interpretation of the sitter, as is usually the case with true portraits. Color, which literally dominates this painter, makes the drawing explode and the work become open, free of contour drawing, like every Impressionist canvas. What defines the Impressionist picture is not merely the capturing of the fleeting-eternal, nor its separate brushstrokes, but above all the transformed transcription of nature into colored poetry."
Alfredo Galvão
AQUINO, Flávio de. Manoel Santiago: vida, obra e crítica. Apresentação de J. Cabicieri. Rio de Janeiro: Cabicieri, 1986.
"Throughout his long career, Manoel Santiago, the great landscape painter, also took the figure as the main subject of his pictures on several occasions. The nude or the portrait, the figure as an attempt to probe the inner self of the model. Manoel Santiago tackled this problem in two different ways. The first, striving for fidelity to the model; the second, seeking - and doing so successfully - to bend the model to his fluid, Impressionist style. In his renderings, as confluent ways of linking the psychic expression of the sitter to the fragmented manner, he comes close to the fauve-cubist. (...) Manoel Santiago's theosophical ideas are of interest because they better explain the interaction between the work and the author's thought. When he sees a figure, an object, a being or a landscape, he feels them as form, as pictorial images; yet his temperament and his ideas also act as a primordial element. 'Style is the man' (Flaubert). But not the man in his appearances, rather in his deepest existential sense. And Manoel Santiago's style is that of the idealistic, spiritualist and theosophical man the painter was. Thus, when he says that 'life is One, forms are multiple', he is in fact proclaiming that the interpretations of life and of the environment in which life exists are multiple, but that this multiplicity obeys the artist's One vision. His aim, therefore - as he wrote -, is to interpret the ideal, to make an idealistic art, spiritually elevated, with intuition and sensitivity. He also says - and rightly so - that creation and pictorial matter are inseparable."
Flávio de Aquino
AQUINO, Flávio de. Manoel Santiago: vida, obra e crítica. Apresentação de J. Cabicieri. Rio de Janeiro: Cabicieri, 1986.
Solo Exhibitions
1987 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Toulouse Galeria de Arte
Group Exhibitions
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
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 - 31st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1925 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 32nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1926 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 33rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1927 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 34th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba - foreign travel prize
1927/1932 - Paris (France) - Salon des Artistes Français, Salon d'Automne, Colonial Salon of French Artists, Salon des Tuileries and Winter Salon
1929 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - National Salon of Fine Arts - gold medal
1932 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Núcleo Bernardelli Salon, at Sociedade Sul-Riograndense de Cultura
1933 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 40th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1935 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th Núcleo Bernardelli Salon, at Enba
1936 - São Paulo SP - 4th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon - honorable mention
1937 - São Paulo SP - 5th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon - bronze medal
1939 - Porto Alegre RS - Fine Arts Salon - medal of honor
1940 - São Paulo SP - 7th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon, at Salão de Arte Almeida Júnior da Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo - small silver medal
1941 - Santiago (Chile) - Exhibition of the 4th Centenary of the City of Santiago - gold medal
1942 - São Paulo SP - 8th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1944 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 50th National Salon of Fine Arts, at MNBA
1945 - São Paulo SP - 11th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon, at Galeria Prestes Maia - large silver medal
1948 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - National Salon of Fine Arts - medal of honor
1949 - São Paulo SP - 15th São Paulo Fine Arts Salon, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A Century of Brazilian Painting: 1850-1950, at MNBA
1951 - São Paulo SP - 1st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão do Trianon
1954 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Black and White Salon
1958 - Porto Alegre RS - Pan-American Art Salon
1961 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rio in Brazilian Painting, at Biblioteca Estadual da Guanabara
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Salon of the 4th Centenary of Rio de Janeiro - medal of honor
1968 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th National Salon of Modern Art, at MAM/RJ
1970 - Curitiba PR - Art Show
1976 - São Paulo SP - 8th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1982 - São Paulo SP - Núcleo Bernardelli Exhibition: Brazilian Art in the 1930s and 1940s, at Acervo Galeria de Arte
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
Posthumous Exhibitions
1989 - São Paulo SP - Thirty-Three Ways of Seeing the World, at Ranulpho Galeria de Arte
1990 - São Paulo SP - Fruits, Flowers and Colors, at Ranulpho Galeria de Arte
1996 - Osasco SP - 4th Art Show, at Centro Universitário Fieo
2003 - São Paulo SP - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at MNBA
Source: Itaú Cultural
