Noemia Mourão (Bragança Paulista SP 1912 - São Paulo SP 1992)
Noemia Mourão was a painter, set designer and draftswoman. In 1932, she studied with Di Cavalcanti, whom she married the following year. Between 1935 and 1940, she lived in Paris, where she attended the Ranson and La Grande Chaumière academies and studied Philosophy and Art History at the Sorbonne. She worked as an illustrator for the newspapers Le Monde and Paris Soir, and was hired by Radio Diffusion Française to take part in a program on literature and the visual arts, alongside Cícero Dias, Tavares Bastos and Marcelino de Carvalho. On returning to Brazil, she studied sculpture with Victor Brecheret.
Critiques
"Noêmia Mourão has long been pursuing a form, a means of communication that is hers alone, and through it a branch of Brazilian painting is expressed in a process of rediscovery, of poetry, of beauty that the artist knows how to convey, without fads (...), without what is in vogue today. (...) Noêmia remains indifferent to the calls of the day and continues to be herself, in research, in a search for visual solutions, in poetry, in a becoming of her own in which all fads fall away and withdraw, leaving a Noêmia alone, uncommitted to any school, always true to herself".
Delmiro Gonçalves
CAVALCANTI, Carlos; AYALA, Walmir, org. Dicionário brasileiro de artistas plásticos. Apresentação de Maria Alice Barroso. Brasília: MEC/INL, 1973-1980. (Dicionários especializados, 5).
"A figurative painter, she found in watercolor her expressive medium par excellence, the one best suited to her subject of gentle female figures, reminiscent, at her best moments, of those of a Marie Laurencin. In more recent years, after an absence of more than 20 years, she held exhibitions of her oils in São Paulo (...), by then lacking the freshness and sensitivity of earlier times".
José Roberto Teixeira Leite
LEITE, José Roberto Teixeira. Dicionário crítico da pintura no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Artlivre, 1988.
Solo Exhibitions
1934 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - First solo exhibition
1938 - Paris (France) - Solo
1943 - São Paulo SP - Solo
1947 - New York (United States) - Solo
1974 - São Paulo SP - Solo
1990 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective, at MAB/Faap
Group Exhibitions
1933 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 3rd Pró-Arte Salon
1935 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Social Art Exhibition, at Clube de Cultura Moderna
1937 - Paris (France) - Salon des Femmes Peintres d'Europe [Salon of Women Painters of Europe]
1938 - Paris (France) - Decorative Art Exhibition
1938 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Salão de Maio
1941 - São Paulo SP - 1st Art Salon of the National Industries Fair
1944 - Belo Horizonte MG - Modern Art Exhibition, at Edifício Mariana
1947 - São Paulo SP - Bonadei, Di Cavalcanti, Noêmia Mourão, Lothar Charoux, Oswald de Andrade Filho, Lúcia Suané, Cesar Lacanna, Mario Zanini and Raphael Galvez, at Galeria Itapetininga
1949 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition of São Paulo Painting
1957 - São Paulo SP - 4th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão Ciccilo Matarazzo Sobrinho
1973 - São Paulo SP - 5th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1975 - Penápolis SP - 1st Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fundação Educacional de Penápolis. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Penápolis
1976 - Penápolis SP - 2nd Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fundação Educacional de Penápolis. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Penápolis
1976 - São Paulo SP - The Salons: Família Artística Paulista, Salão de Maio and the São Paulo Visual Artists' Union, at Museu Lasar Segall
1977 - São Paulo SP - Art Show, at Grupo Financeiro BBI
1991 - São Paulo SP - 21st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
Posthumous Exhibitions
1993 - São Paulo SP - 100 Masterpieces from the Mário de Andrade Collection: Painting and Sculpture, at IEB/USP
1998 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Fantasy: The Ballet of the 4th Centenary, at Sesc Belenzinho
1999 - São Paulo SP - The Female Figure in the MAB Collection, at MAB/Faap
2000 - São Paulo SP - The Female Figure in the MAB Collection, at MAB/Faap
2001 - São Paulo SP - Figures and Faces, at A Galeria
2004 - Brasília DF - JK's Modernist Eye, at Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Palácio do Itamaraty
2004 - São Paulo SP - Women Painters, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2004 - São Paulo SP - New Acquisitions: 1995 - 2003, at MAB/Faap
2004 - São Paulo SP - The Price of Seduction: From Corset to Silicone, at Itaú Cultural
Source: Itaú Cultural
