Here, art critic Lourival Gomes Machado discusses Brazilian painting from the point of view of a critical debate that he sees making the rounds in Brazil. A number of art critics judge Brazilian painting based on their belief in the opposition between “individual freedom” and the “determinism by environmental factors.” The belief of this critic is that every artist is subject to the impositions of the world in which he lives, which even affects the choices of materials and techniques. The environment influences the painter in terms of certain elements of the composition (color and light). To Gomes Machado, technique is an essential factor in any analysis of the creation process, regardless of the fact that a number of critics accuse Brazilian “modernist” artists of being too concerned with technique. In any event, he observes that a set of precepts is not enough to take in the entire range of artwork produced in Brazil. 

Lourival Gomes Machado (1917−67) was a journalist, critic, and art historian. Around 1941, along with intellectuals of the stature of Antonio Candido, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, and Décio de Almeida Prado, he launched the journal Clima (São Paulo). The objective sought by Clima was to generate a renewal in the spheres of literary, film, and theater criticism in Brazil. In the 1940s, Gomes Machado was an art critic for the daily newspaper Folha da Manhã, and international affairs editor for O Estado de S. Paulo. He also served as director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP) from 1949 to 1951, after Léon Degand stepped down. His best-known text, Barroco Mineiro (1969), is an anthology of articles on the subject, previously initiated in 1953 with Teorias do Barroco.

This article was published in the journal Clima by Gomes Machado early in his career as an art critic, and it shows the influence of São Paulo’s version of “modernism.” This was made evident when he referred to the “the ranch-inspired coloring (caipiras)” of Brazilian painting—bearing in mind the pictorial ideas of Tarsila do Amaral. Serving as background for his “environmental factors” was the debate on the sociology of art, passionately carried on at the Universidade de São Paulo. Given his leaning toward Candido Portinari and Clóvis Graciano, Gomes Machado showed clearly his selective preferences.

There are two essays by Mário de Andrade that supplement the thinking of Gomes Machado, both under the title of “Tarsila.” In the first [see doc. no. 781921], he sets forth the hypothesis that this artist’s painting features a “ruralism of forms and colors” that amount to what could be called a “national psychology.” In the other [doc. no. 781938], de Andrade states that the cheerful coloring and robust volumes of Tarsila’s painting show a forceful kind of “nationalism.”