“I want to be the painter of my country,” do Amaral declared in 1923, at a moment when Brazilian artists and writers were actively developing a new, homegrown modernism. With its undulating planes suggesting land, water, and sky, and a humanlike cactus, The Moon offers the artist’s vision of a Brazilian landscape. At the same time, do Amaral’s visual language draws on experimental forms of European art, which she absorbed while studying in Paris. In this way, the painting exemplifies anthropofagia: the idea, introduced in a 1928 manifesto by the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, that Brazil would forge its own art by digesting—or literally “cannibalizing”—European influence.
2023
Kids label from 2025
Shape-shifting
A crescent moon hangs low on the horizon between wavy clouds and dark hills. Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral painted this dreamlike landscape. Near the river stands a green heart-shaped form with two oval shapes growing out of it. Some people see it as a person, while others see it as a cactus or a tree. What do you see?
Gallery label from 2019
In the 1920s, do Amaral frequently traveled between São Paulo, her native city, and Paris. There, she became acquainted with artists such as Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger, and witnessed a variety of avant-garde artistic strategies. In this painting of a moonlit scene, a lonesome cactus resembling a human figure stands in the foreground, contemplatively facing the crescent moon while rooted in an elliptical stream of water—a recurring motif in do Amaral’s compositions from this period. The painting reflects what the artist called her “clean, sharply outlined” technique, while offering an undulating spectacle of a dreamlike quality.
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Tarsila do Amaral
Brazilian, 1886–1973 2 works onlineI am so thankful to have spent the whole of my childhood in the fazenda . My memories of that time have grown precious to me,” wrote Tarsila do Amaral in a letter to her parents sent from Paris in 1923.
Learn more →![Estudo de Composição (Figura só) III (Study for Composition [Lonely Figure] III)](https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjQwMDU4NSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=eab7ff80b0befe71)
Landscape
The natural landforms of a region; also, an image that has natural scenery as its primary focus.
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Nature Symbolized
Gallery 509Applying the formal techniques and stylistic features of European avant-gardes to distinctively homegrown subjects resulted in a fresh approach to modernism in which the natural environment appeared as central yet was often abstracted.
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