188:.” Brazil was the largest exporter of bananas in the world, making up approximately twenty-three percent of all the world’s bananas. The economic importance of such a valuable resource was not lost on the Brazilians but they disliked it being the metaphor for behavior because unfortunately for the Brazilian, this export was taken advantage of and exploited by more prosperous countries, particularly the United States of America. Therefore the banana became synonymous with American imperialism and Brazilian dependence on richer countries. The banana mostly represented the people in general and the state of the nation politically, socially, and economically. By the perfectionism in his art, it seemed as though Amaral was attempting to reestablish the importance of the banana as a symbol. The first of the banana series, Boa vizinhanca (The Good Neighbor) in 1968 linked the Brazilian and American flags with a banana, thus pointing out the obvious connection between the two countries. He also changed the Brazilian motto on the flag to highlight the word Esso, which was a large U.S. oil company (now Exxon Mobil) operating in Brazil. After
192:, his paintings became more critical and darker. Amaral began to paint his bananas as rotting, mutilated, turning into “mud,” bound with cord, etc. The banana being synonymous with the human body was “being victimized by colonialism, repression, and torture.” The transition from his earlier to his later banana paintings is characterized by the sharp, pointed objects in Battlefields. The objects are gray and black, reminding the viewer of technology and smoke. The forks and knives were metaphors for repression and torture. Battlefields is the confrontation between the inorganic and the organic, the machine and the body. The ropes and sharp objects directly represent the repression occurring under the military dictatorship. The fact that the Battlefield paintings are numbered not named reinforced the anonymity of the victims of the regime. By mutilating his bananas, Amaral reveals the problems wrought by the U.S.-backed regime in Brazil.
173:. There was a severe recession, which led to popular dissatisfaction with the government. The government responded to peaceful protests with Institutional Act No. 5, which closed Congress, dissolved the veneer of democracy that existed at the time, allowed the regime to arrest, imprison without habeas corpus, and to censor, outlaw criticism, and repress the populace harshly. This is when the dictatorship tortured and often murdered anyone even suspected of opposing it. Without recourse to dialogue or democracy, a small portion of the opposition took to guerrilla resistance such as high-profile kidnappings in order to demand their comrades be freed from the dictatorship's torture chambers, and bank robberies. Among other things, Amaral's banana paintings reflected the human rights abuses of the regime and its support by the United States.
119:. In 1959 Amaral enrolled in the Pratt Graphic Institute in New York City where he learned wood engraving from Shiko Munakata and W. Rogalsky. In 1964, there was a coup d’état in Amaral's native Brazil that replaced the democratic government with a military dictatorship. This new government under the military juntas and the sociopolitical and economic effects it had would become the focus of many of his later paintings. In 1967, Amaral opened an exhibition of woodcuts entitled “O meu e o seu” (“Mine and Yours”), after which he switched to painting as his primary medium. From 1968 to 1975, he painted a series of banana paintings, which he is most famous for. Amaral traveled between Brazil and New York since the early 1970s, until his death.
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the
Brazilians would say, “bananas to sell and to give away.” These bananas were generally less corrupted than Amaral's later bananas but by the end of the series, these too have begun to rot and become entangled in ropes, mimicking the parrot's perch, the most common torture practice by the regime. The Campos de batalha series began around 1973, after Amaral moved back to New York City to avoid the intense censorship and possible retaliation by the Brazilian government. In this series, Amaral introduces sharp, metallic objects like forks and knives that penetrate and cut the bananas. Here he recreates what was happening to the bodies of those who dared resist the totalitarian regime.
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Amaral's style is full of close-ups and strange angles. He paints with photorealism and extreme detail. His use of yellows and greens refer to the
Brazilian flag and therefore to Brazilians themselves. He often uses dramatic coloring, dark values, and much shadow. The verticals and diagonals he uses,
176:
From 1968 to 1975, Antonio
Henrique Amaral painted two series of paintings focused solely on bananas. The first, painted mainly from 1968 to 1972, was titled Brasilia, while the second, from 1973 to 1974, was titled Campos de batallha, or Battlefields. Brasiliana was more of a banana festival or, as
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movement headed by
Tarsila do Amaral in the 1920s and 30s. The movement concerned itself with cultural cannibalism in order to create something that is uniquely Brazilian. The Tropicalismo Movement, as well as Amaral's banana paintings that fell under that category of Tropicalismo, coincided with
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movement that occurred in Brazil was mostly a musical movement, although it also had some aspects of literature, poetry, and visual art. The movement was a “cycle of intense creative activity and cultural transformation” as well as a revival of the
91:– 24 April 2015 in São Paulo) was a Brazilian painter and printmaker. He is best known for his images' artistic and political critiques in the form of a series of paintings of bananas that have been mutilated by forks and ropes.
184:’s day, the banana represented the unique culture and identity of Brazil. By the time Antonio Henrique Amaral began painting bananas, their meaning had been added too. In one regard, the banana symbolized the existence of the “
139:(1891–1957) also used banana trees as identification for Brazilian people in his painting, Bananal (1927). These artists all contributed to the emergence of the banana as a symbol of Brazil that Amaral would later adopt.
115:. Later, in 1957, he entered the School of Engraving and was trained to do woodcuts and linocuts by Lívio Abramo. Amaral's first solo exhibition came in 1958 when he showed a group of engravings at the
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in São Paulo, Brazil. His interest in art stemmed from a visit to the 1st
Biennial in São Paulo in 1951, where he was intrigued by the modern art he saw. In 1952, he took drawing classes from
131:(1610–1665), the Dutch Brazilian painter from the 17th century, also associated the banana with the region that would later become Brazil. Antonio Henrique Amaral's own great-aunt,
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As the banana was Amaral's favorite subject and symbolic representation, it is important to note that he was not the first
Brazilian painter to use it.
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A cultural history of Latin
America: literature, music, and the visual arts in the 19th and 20th centuries
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the political upheaval of the coup d’état and later repression under the military dictatorship.
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Antonio
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1970 — Centro Pedagógico y
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The symbol of the banana was complex and diverse. In the 1920s, in
103:, Brazil. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Law from the
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1958 — Instituto de Arte Moderna do Chile, Santiago, Chile
677:. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art. p. 237.
662:. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art. p. 158.
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1969 — Galeria Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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led a coup that replaced the existing government with a
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1975 — Nashville Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee
438:"Artista plástico Antonio Henrique Amaral morre em SP"
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1974 — Lee Ault & Co. Gallery, New York, New York
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1958 — Universidade de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
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557:. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 13.
555:Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Art
398:1972 — Galeria Socar Seraphico, Brasília, Brazil
350:1959 — Pan American Union, Washington, DC, U.S.
675:Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987
395:1972 — Galerie de Theatre, Geneve, Switzerland
660:Art of the Fantastic: Latin America 1920-1987
413:1975 — Galeria Bonino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
386:1971 — Pan American Union, Washington, DC, US
383:1971 — Galeria Bonino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
356:1960 — Petite Galerie, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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692:(lecture), Spokane, WA: Whitworth University
658:Day, Halliday T.; Hollister Sturges (1987).
368:1967 — Galeria Mirante das Artes, SP, Brazil
353:1960 — Galeria Antigonovo, São Paulo, Brazil
362:1963 — Galeria Mobilínea, São Paulo, Brazil
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404:1973 — Galeria San Diego, Bogotá, Colombia
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579:. Coral Gables: Elite Art. pp. 1–20.
507:Antonio Henrique Amaral: obra em processo
389:1971 — Galería Merkup, México, DF, México
377:1970 — Galería Círculo 3, La Paz, Bolivia
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401:1972 — Galeria Bonfiglioli, SP, Brazil
371:1968 — A.A.M.A.M. de São Paulo, Brazil
553:Pontual, Roberto. Jane Turner (ed.).
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458:. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993.
365:1967 — Galeria Astreia, SP, Brazil
167:Humberto De Alencar Castelo Branco
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707:Antonio Henrique Amaral homepage
509:. São Paulo, Brasil: DBA, 1997.
444:(in Portuguese). 24 April 2015.
323:Anima & mania — a guihotina
339:São Paulo Museum of Modern Art
117:São Paulo Museum of Modern Art
113:São Paulo Museum of Modern Art
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607:"Homage to the 21st hCentury"
293:Instrumentos de amor e morte
317:Anima & mania — a carta
99:Amaral was born in 1935 in
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519:Amaral, Antonio Henrique.
575:Morais, Fredrico (1989).
521:"Antonio Henrique Amaral"
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590:Green, James N. (2010).
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634:"A View From Abroad"
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161:The Banana Paintings
613:. Walker Art Center
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341:, São Paulo, Brazil
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330:Exhibitions
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205:(1973) and
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611:Sightlines
594:. Duke UP.
424:References
221:Brasiliana
123:Influences
95:Background
101:São Paulo
85:São Paulo
33:São Paulo
531:28 April
311:Torsos V
269:Expansão
64:Movement
59:Painting
643:2 April
617:2 April
337:1958 —
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325:, 1996
319:, 1996
313:, 1995
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305:Torsos
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277:, 1978
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241:, 1973
235:, 1973
229:, 1972
223:, 1969
89:Brazil
37:Brazil
213:Works
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482:ISBN
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