MASP

Candido Portinari’s paintings were progressively oriented around the geometrization of landscapes and bodies. In Colheita de feijão [Bean Harvest] (1957), the artist simultaneously stylized subjects and space, overlapping onto the scene a well-defined grid that seems to control the entire composition. In this painting, the vertical and horizontal cross-hatching of the land used for drying beans is transposed onto the bodies and clothes of the harvesters, creating a joint movement between workers and soil, entirely painted in gray, green and brown tones. Notice the textures and chromatic highlights in certain elements of the clothes—a hat, a blouse, a cap—of the men drying the beans, or of the women using tools for sorting them. This clear gender division may symbolize a division of labor: the tasks demanding physical strength fall to the men, while those requiring close attention and detail to the women. Curiously, the animals, both in this painting and in its sister work, Colheita de Arroz [Rice Harvest] (1957), watch the scene in contemplative poses. Moreover, both paintings, created as a diptych, join two essential elements of the Brazilian diet, revealing how Portinari sought to compose a modern representation of national traditions and identity.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018