This is Mário de Andrade’s critical review of Hugo Adami’s exhibition at the Casa das Arcadas (São Paulo, 1928). This was Adami’s first solo show following his return from Europe. De Andrade discusses the artist’s virtuoso technique and his command of objectivity within the confines of his naturalist composition. It is not the expression of a sense of objectivity in the painting that most impresses Mário, but the total transformation of the referent into an “essential artistic value,” and the painting itself into “an artistic object and nothing more.” Put more succinctly, the author is referring to the elimination of any possibility of drifting off on an artistic tangent while contemplating Adami’s still lifes, which are the specific result of an aesthetic exploration. We can imagine the initial organization of the image on the two-dimensional plane of the canvas, a process that respects all the elements involved in the composition.

This review by Mário de Andrade (1893–1945) provides a brief yet incisive reflection on one of the most important aspects of painting produced in São Paulo during the 1930s and 1940s. That is that the combination of traditional subject matter with respect for technical and formal knowledge merged together to achieve the desired painting. This characteristic was typical of the work produced by the artists who (as from 1937) were members of FAP [Artistic Family of São Paulo], which were shown for the first time at the Hotel Esplanada in São Paulo. In addition to the painter, set designer, and lyrical singer Hugo Adami (1899–1999), the FAP—which was more moderate in terms of avant-garde ideas and experimentation, and even more moderate than the Salão de Maio founded just a few months earlier—included painters such as Paulo Rossi Osir, Waldemar da Costa, Francisco Rebolo, Mario Zanini, Fulvio Penacchi, Aldo Bonadei, and Clóvis Graciano, among others. The latter group, children of Italian immigrants such as Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988), were already part of the Grupo Santa Helena. 

For more information regarding this document, see by Mário de Andrade “Esta paulista família”, O Estado de S. Paulo (São Paulo: 1939, p.14) [doc. no. 780722].