Regina Graz (Itapetininga SP 1897 - São Paulo SP 1973)
Painter, decorator.
Between 1913 and 1920, Regina Gomide Graz studied at the École des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva, Switzerland, together with her brother Antonio Gomide (1895 - 1967) and John Graz (1891 - 1980), whom she married in 1920. That year she returned to Brazil. In 1923, in Rio de Janeiro, she researched Indigenous weaving of the Upper Amazon, becoming, alongside Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899 - 1970), a pioneer of interest in the Brazilian Indigenous tradition. She devoted herself to tapestry and made panneaux, bedspreads, cushions, fabrics and lampshades in cubist and art deco styles. In 1930, she and her husband took part in decorating the Casa Modernista [Modernist House] designed by Gregori Warchavchik (1896 - 1972) in São Paulo. From 1932 to 1934, she was a member of the Sociedade Pró-Arte Moderna - Spam, and between 1934 and 1940 she took part in Grupo 7 with Victor Brecheret (1894 - 1955), Elisabeth Nobiling (1902 - 1975), Yolanda Mohalyi (1909 - 1978), Rino Levi (1901 - 1965), John Graz and Antonio Gomide. In 1941, she founded the Indústria de Tapetes Regina Ltda. [Regina Rug Industry].
Critical Commentary
Regina Graz returned to Brazil in 1920, after studying in Geneva, and with Antonio Gomide (1895 - 1967) and John Graz (1891 - 1980) began developing paintings and decorative objects linked to the art deco style.
Few works survive from her output of the 1920s. Regina Graz devoted herself mainly to interior decoration, working with velvet tapestries, panneaux and cushions and creating motifs close to geometric abstraction, derived from cubist experiments. In the tapestry Diana Caçadora [Diana the Huntress], 1920s, the linear figures emphasize the lightness of form; the background landscape is merely indicated and tends toward abstraction. In Coqueiros [Coconut Palms], ca.1930, geometrization and formal simplification prevail.
The artist studied Indigenous textile art at the Museu do Índio in Rio de Janeiro. She began making rugs, tapestries, lampshades, cushions and bedspreads using patterns designed by herself or by John Graz.
Critiques
"Regina, in the field of the so-called applied arts, has the same value that must be attributed to Tarsila. She was the woman who most absorbed the demands of a time in evolution; she had the strength of a frankly European education, combined with an exquisitely national feeling. It is a pity that many of her works have disappeared. What remains confirms her as an artist of great worth. Regina, sister of Antonio Gomide and wife of John Graz, was the driving force of the group to which modernism owes its connection with art déco".
P. M. Bardi
BARDI, Pietro Maria. O modernismo no Brasil. São Paulo: SUDAMERIS, 1978. (Arte e cultura, 1). p. 79.
"At a time when expressions of Brazilianness were few or almost nonexistent, she, coming from a culturally more advanced center such as Switzerland, embraced a nationalism without any folkloric intent, which years later, in Rio, she would expand into in-depth research on the Indigenous weaving of the Upper Amazon, extending it to her woven works. Regina Gomide Graz also deserves credit for another historic role: that of having been the first artist concerned with the decorative arts and their renewal, 'attentive to an interrelation between the new art then sought by the young and decoration', as Aracy Amaral observes, stressing that the artist 'tried to carry out in São Paulo work in the field of decoration and the manual arts like that which Sonia Delaunay was developing in Paris in the 1920s, alongside her work as a painter'".
Geraldo Edson de Andrade
ANDRADE, Geraldo Edson de. Aspectos da tapeçaria brasileira. Apresentação de Clarival do Prado Valladares. Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE, 1978.
Solo Exhibitions
1947 - São Paulo SP - Solo
Group Exhibitions
1920 - São Paulo SP - Regina Gomide Graz and John Graz, at Cinema Central
1922 - São Paulo SP - Modern Art Week, at Theatro Municipal
1931 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exhibition at the First Modernist House in Rio de Janeiro, at Rua Toneleros
1931 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Revolutionary Salon, at Enba
1933 - São Paulo SP - 1st SPAM Modern Art Exhibition, at Palacete Campinas
1934 - São Paulo SP - 1st São Paulo Fine Arts Salon, at Rua 11 de Agosto
1942 - São Paulo SP - 7th Salon of the Visual Artists' Union, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1960 - São Paulo SP - Women's Contribution to the Visual Arts in Brazil, at MAM/SP
1972 - São Paulo SP - The 1922 Week: Background and Consequences, at Masp
Posthumous Exhibitions
1974 - São Paulo SP - Time of the Modernists, at Masp
1974 - São Paulo SP - 1st Brazilian Tapestry Show, at MAB/Faap
1975 - São Paulo SP - SPAM and CAM, at Museu Lasar Segall
1976 - São Paulo SP - A Família Graz-Gomide: o Art-Deco no Brasil [The Graz-Gomide Family: Art Deco in Brazil], at Museu Lasar Segall
1984 - São Paulo SP - Tradition and Rupture: A Synthesis of Brazilian Art and Culture, at Fundação Bienal
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX, at Fundação Bienal
1998 - São Paulo SP - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/SP
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/RJ
2000 - Valencia (Spain) - De la Antropofagia a Brasilia: Brasil 1920-1950, at IVAM. Centre Julio González
2002 - São Paulo SP - From Anthropophagy to Brasília: Brazil 1920-1950, at MAB/Faap
2004 - São Paulo SP - Women Painters, at Pinacoteca do Estado
Source: Itaú Cultural
