Pedro Américo (Areia PB 1843 - Florence, Italy 1905)
Pedro Américo was a painter, draftsman, teacher, caricaturist and writer. Before completing ten years, he followed as a draftsman to assist the scientific expedition of the French naturalist Jean Brunet to the northeast of Brazil, in 1852. Around 1855, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied at Colégio Pedro II and, in the year next, he enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (Aiba). Between 1859 and 1864, he studied with a scholarship granted by Emperor Dom Pedro II at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, being a student of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Hippolyte Flandrin and Carle-Horace Vernet. He also attended the Physics Institute and the Sorbonne.
After a trip to Italy, he returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1864 and took over the drawing chair at AIBA. The following year, he established himself in Brussels, where he obtained the title of Doctor in Natural Sciences from the University of Brussels, in 1868. aiba. Between 1870 and 1871, he was responsible for the caricature magazine A Comédia Social. In 1877, he exhibited in Florence the work Batalha de Avaí, commissioned by the Ministry of the Army. The painting was again shown in 1879 at the General Exhibition of Fine Arts, alongside Batalha dos Guararapes, by Victor Meirelles, generating intense controversy. Aimed at the Hall of Honor of the Ipiranga Museum, current São Paulo Museum of the University of São Paulo (MP/USP). With the Proclamation of the Republic, he was elected deputy of the National Constituent Assembly, in 1890. In 1900, he returned to Florence.
Critical Commentary
Pedro Américo de Figueiredo and Mello is born in a family of musicians. He has been drawing since very young and in 1853, before turning 10, he is invited to join the expedition of naturalist Jean Brunnet, as an assistant designer, and travels by the Brazilian Northeast. The work is worth a recommendation for studying at Colégio Dom Pedro II, in Rio de Janeiro, where he moved in 1854. A year later he enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA, where he studies three years and progresses quickly. The painter and then director of Aiba, Porto Alegre (1806 - 1879) even calls him "O Papa-Medalhas". His success is noted even by Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891), who personally takes care of his transfer to Paris and is responsible for the costs.
Thus, in 1859, Pedro Américo moved to France and He enrolled at the École National Superiéure des Beaux-Arts of Paris [School National Superior of Fine Arts]. He has classes with Leon Coignet (1794 - 1880) and Sebastien Melchior Cornu (1804 - 1870), disciple of Hippolyte Flandrin (1809 - 1864). Very curious, he studies physics, first at the Monsieur Ganot Institute, then at the Sorbonne. In this university, he deepens his knowledge in architecture, theology, literature and philosophy and in this field he has as masters Victor Cousin (1792 - 1867) and Claude Bernard (1813 - 1888). The artist attends physics classes taught by Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) and Archeology, by Charles Ernest Beule (1826 - 1874). During his period in Paris, he is awarded with many awards and titles, including two awards from the Academy of Fine Arts, and paints two of his most famous canvases: A Carioca (1882) and Sócrates warding off Alcebíades from addiction (ca.1863). He wins the Bachelor of Science in Natural Sciences by the Sorbonne, with the thesis Philosophical considerations on the fine arts among the ancients. Neoclassicos, in 1862, Pedro Américo goes to Belgium and enrolls in the Université de Bruxelles, who attends with little regularity, and in 1869 he receives the title of Doctor in Natural Sciences. Back in Brazil, in 1864, the painter competes for the drawing chair at AIBA. It obtains the title, but as the environment in Rio de Janeiro is not favorable, it returns to France. This time the stay is tougher, as it has few resources. Your teacher salary barely covers ordinary expenses. However, it does important work of a religious nature. In 1869, he traveled to Portugal, with the aim of returning to Brazil. In Lisbon, he stays at the house of his former teacher, Porto Alegre, marries his daughter Carlota and in the early 1870s returns to Brazil. Resume the post of teacher at AIBA; He teaches courses in Aesthetics, Art History and Archeology.
At the time he works hard: paints, directs the Numismatics and Archeology sections of the National Historical Museum, writes and makes caricatures for the periodical to social comedy. The canvases are mythological, historical and portrait scenes. Among those portrayed are the emperors Dom Pedro I (1798 - 1834) and Dom Pedro II and the Marshal Duque de Caxias. In 1871, he held his first panel, the Battle of Campo Grande War war scene. With the success of the painting, Pedro Américo is awarded the following year with the title of Historical Painter of the Real Câmara and later receives an invitation from the Crown to carry out the Battle of Avaí (1873-1877), a scene from the Paraguayan War. To work on the order, the artist left for Europe in 1873 and, the following year, installs his studio in a room provided by the Italian government at the convent of the Blessed Annunziata, in Florence, where he remains for approximately three years. Finished, the painting is first exposed in Florence, in 1877, with the presence of the Emperor of Brazil. Upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of this year, the painting causes enthusiastic reactions. Some support it vehemently, others get angry and accuse Pedro Américo of plagiarizing the screen Battle of Montebelo of the Italian Andrea Appiani (1754 - 1817).
Around 1879, he returns to Florence, where he paints some of his most important paintings. The vote of Heloísa (1880), Judite and Holofenes (1880), Moisés and Jocabed (1884) and Arab rabbicist (1884) are from that time. In the period, he also dedicates himself to writing. In 1880, he published the discourse on plagiarism in literature and art, defending himself against accusations of plagiarism. In 1881, the artist launches the novel Holocaust, of biographical inspiration. It is poorly received - very idealized, more than the scenes of his paintings, he is considered unbelievable. In 1885, Pedro Américo returned to Brazil and resumed the chair of History of Arts, Aesthetics and Archeology at Aiba and the following year he published another novel, Amor de Esposo. He stays for a short time and returns to Florence, this time due to the commission, by the Province of São Paulo, of the scene of the proclamation of the Independence of Brazil. He remains in the city until 1888, when he delivers his best-known work: Independence or Death (1888) - also known as O Grito do Ipiranga. His work, once again, generates controversy. They point out the similarity of this canvas to the 1807 painting - The Battle of Friedland, by the French painter Ernest Meissonier (1815 - 1891). In November 1916, Monteiro Lobato (1882 - 1948) states, on this canvas, that "rarely the art of painting reaches such a vertex". rough" of a genuinely Brazilian art, praises its technical qualities and its management of academic forms.
With the fall of the monarchy, the republican regime promotes, in 1890, a reform in AIBA, which is renamed the National School of Fine Arts - Enba. The oldest and closest teachers of the Emperor are removed. Among them is Pedro Americo. In the same year, he is elected deputy for Paraíba. It is not very present in the Chamber's sessions, but it has an important role. It forwards projects to create museums, galleries and universities across the country; of reducing the presidential mandate and granting a lifetime pension for the deposed emperor. In the intervals of the parliamentary function, Pedro Américo paints canvases, such as Tiradentes Quarterjado (1893).
In 1894, with a very shaken health, the artist transferred to Florence, this time, on a definitive basis. There he writes two novels: Fugitive, published in 1899, and Cidade Eterna, published in 1903. Despite his fragility, he paints a lot. He remained in Italy until his death in 1905.
Notes
1 LOBATO, Monteiro. Pedro Americo. In: _____. Ideas by Jeca Tatu. São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1951. p. 75.
Criticism
"The experts affirm that until today there has not yet appeared in Brazil a designer as perfect as Pedro Américo. His painting Batalha do Avaí is considered a model of technique. Wonders: The Cry of Ipiranga, David and Abisag and the Carioca and the Carioca This last painting was painted in Europe and sent as a gift to Emperor Pedro II. I like it, however, the butler of the imperial house considered the licentious reason to appear in His Majesty's gallery. The painting was returned and the great painter, wounded in his pride, offered it to William I, Emperor of Germany. with gold medal".
José Claudino da Nóbrega
NÓBREGA, José Claudino da. Paraíba small but glorious. In: _____. Memories of an antique traveler. São Paulo: Raízes, 1984. p. 84.
"The artist abandoned the ceded lines of academic composition, and composed the subject as he best understood, to convey the impression received more directly. Principles of Art. If, however, we inquire well about the cause that provokes impersonality in artists of care studies and of marked intelligences, we find as a fundamental cause these austere principles of art, which so much concern conventionalist critics. Limit the artist to copy the line of the composition of this or of that old master, of Rafael or Rubens, of Leonardo or Rembrandt, is to deny the right of the style, which is the affirmation of individuality. Copying from the masters the masterpieces is to try to imitate them, and imitation does nothing more than To highlight the merits of the original, who imitates it is because he cannot invent the composition of the military episode of Campo Grande, a little timid in certain points, is, however, the first phase of this broad and vigorous style that we see in the Battle of Avaí. We need to serve a point of utmost importance. The style is not just the touch. A mediocrity, as E. Véron states, can have the most skillful touch, and for that fact it will never cease to be a mediocrity. The style is the artist himself seen through his work, it is the set of his work: the expression, the subject, the touch, the line and, above all, the color, is finally the je ne sais quoi of que que fromentin in his work les maîtres d'autrofois: n'y a-t-il pas dans tout artiste digne de ce nom un je ne sais qui se charge de ce soin naturellement et sans effort?'".
Gonzaga Duque
Duque, Gonzaga. Progresso. In: ___. Brazilian art. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995. p. 151-152. (Art: Essays and Documents).
"As well He saw Gonzaga Duque in his novel Mocidade Morta, Pedro Américo was the prototype of the official painter who knows how to promote his own art, using uninhibited public institutions and the media. With independence or death, presented in Florence in 1887, in the presence of the emperor and the highest European aristocracy, Americo was running for the vate of the empire; The Academy did not open its doors for him. The birth of the Republic offered him the ideal frame for a new attempt, with peace and concord, for example, today at the Itamaraty Palace, in Rio de Janeiro. With the backdrop of this same picture, Pedro Américo painted a large monumental building, a temple-museum in whose interior one can see its independence or death, the great historical painting that represents the founding monument of Brazilian independence. For Pedro Américo, being the painter-priest of the nation was a vocation. He was a painter worthy of a national monument, an altar of the homeland all marble and capitolina wolves. (...) The excessive dimension of his ambitions and the lack of undisputed public recognition made him the prototype of the misunderstood genius represented in his unhappy novel Holocaust, largely autobiographical. With undoubted ability, which parallels the uninhibited historicism of Gervez, Pedro Américo will record his pessimism and frustration in the extraordinary quartered Tiradentes, from the Mariano Procópio de Juiz de Fora Museum, in which the canons of the heroic representation are sarcastically distorted, acquiring a mind-blowing climate of Grand-guignol."
Luciano Migliaccio
Migliaccio, Luciano. The second half of the century. In: Mostra do Rediscovery, 2000, São Paulo. 19th Century Art. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Associação Brasil 500 years Visual Arts, 2000. p. 113.
Individual exhibitions
1877 - Florence (Italy) - Exhibits the work Batalha do Avaí, in the Convent of the Most Holy Annunciation
ca.1880 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exposes the work Batalha do Avaí, in Largo do Paço
1888 - Florence (Italy) - Work Independence or Death, with the presence of D. Pedro II
Collective exhibitions
1856 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Quarterly Contest, at AIBA - Medal of Gold
1864 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1865 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 17th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1867 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 19th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1872 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 22nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1876 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 24th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Aiba
1879 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 25th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1884 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Works Mandadas de Florence, in Aiba
1884 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 26th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1890 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1900 - Paris (France) - Universal Exhibition of Paris
1900 - Paris (France) - Pedro Weingartner, Pedro Américo and Eliseu Visconti
Posthetic exhibitions
1940 - São Paulo SP - Retrospective Exhibition: Works of the Great Masters of Painting and His Disciples
1941 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Pedro Américo and Victor Meirelles, at MNBA
1950 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - A century of Brazilian painting: 1850-1950, in the MNBA
1970 - São Paulo SP - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo 1970
1987 - São Paulo SP - Brazil painted by national and foreign masters: 18th-20th centuries, at MASP
1989 - Fortaleza CE - Brazilian art of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Ceará collections: paintings and drawings, at the Cultural Space of Unifor
1989 - Ouro Preto MG - Inconfidente ideology in process, at the Museum of Inconfidência
1991 - São Paulo SP - Desire at the Academy: 1847-1916 , at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Sesquicentenary of the birth of Pedro Américo, in the MNBA
1994 - São Paulo SP - A critical look at the 19th century collection, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1996 - Barra Mansa RJ - 12 names in Brazilian painting, at the Centro Universitário de Barra Mansa
1998 - São Paulo SP - 24th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Rediscovered Brazil, at Paço Imperial
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 rediscovery show. 19th century and black art of body and soul, at the Bienal Foundation
2000 - Porto Alegre RS - from Frans Post to Eliseu Visconti: National Museum of Fine Arts Collection, at Margs
2000 - São Paulo SP - 7th Salon of Art and Antiques, at A Hebraica
2001 - São Paulo SP - 30 Masters of Painting in Brazil, at Masp
2001 - São Paulo SP - Aldo Franco Collection, at Pinacoteca do State
2002 - Brasília DF - Barão do Rio Branco: his work and his time, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Palácio do Itamaraty
2002 - Niterói RJ - Brazilian art on paper: 19th and 20th centuries, at Solar do Jambeiro
2002 - São Paulo SP - Image and identity: a look at the history in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, in the Instituto Cultural Banco Santos
2004 - São Paulo SP - Paper Office, at CCSP
Source: Itaú Cultural
