Itanhaém 1949

Anita Malfatti made this bright oil painting of a Brazilian town, maybe around the 1920s. Look at those buildings! Yellow, orange, blue… and that hazy, golden light. I can just picture Malfatti with her brushes, squinting at the scene, trying to capture the essence of the place. I wonder what it was like for her, a woman artist at that time, asserting her vision, pushing against expectations. You can feel a certain freedom in the brushwork, a kind of joyful experimentation with color and form. There’s a real dance between the flat planes of the buildings and the more rendered details, like the figure with the umbrella, or the little trees along the road. It makes me think about the bravery it takes to be yourself, to see the world in your own way, and to put that vision down on canvas for everyone to see. I love how artists speak to each other across time through the language of painting.