Os retirantes 1944

Candido Portinari made this painting, Os Retirantes, with oils on canvas, and the way he's built up the surface feels really urgent. Look at how Portinari uses color, mostly muted, like browns and grays, but then he hits you with these stark whites that make the figures almost ghostly. It's heavy, the texture, thick in places, especially around the faces. It's like he’s sculpting with paint, really digging in to show the exhaustion and despair. There’s this one figure, the child in the front, their eyes wide and hollow, and the way the paint is scratched around the face really gets to you. Portinari reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz; she captured the suffering of war in a very similar way. Ultimately, both artists show us how art can be a form of bearing witness.