MASP

Born in Italy, Eliseu Visconti was one of the main proponents of academic painting in Brazil at the turn of the 20th century. He migrated to Rio de Janeiro when he was six years old and was very young when he began studying at the School of Arts and Crafts and later at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where he was taught by some of the most important artists of the time, such as Victor Meirelles (1832-1903). In the 1890s, he studied for some years in Europe, and upon his return to Brazil he was commissioned by Mayor Pereira Passos (1836-1913) to paint decorative panels at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro. He also became a teacher at the National School of Fine Arts. Over decades of prolific practice, Visconti was highly influenced by the European painting movements of the time, such as pointillism, mostly in portraits, and landscape paintings marked by realism. The work Flowers was produced when Visconti was living between Rio de Janeiro and Paris, from where he used to travel to Saint-Hubert, a small village where his wife, Louise Palombe (1882-1954), was born. It was from there that the artist depicted rural scenes and still lifes like this one. It is a composition with four types of flowers in pink, white and orange on foliage painted in several shades of green. Here, we see the strong influence of impressionism, mainly in the absence of clear outlines between the petals, which is accentuated by the leaves in the background. Curiously, the picture was donated by painter Assis Chateaubriand, the founder of MASP, in 1927; years later, it was stolen, only to be recovered in 1967, when, under the title of Trepadeira em flor [Flowering Climber], it was officially incorporated into the museum collection, which contains another five works by Visconti.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2020

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