O ESTUDO DO HOMEM, 1915/16 carvão e pastel, 62,5 x 47,2 cm Coleção de Artes Visuais , IEB-USP 1915

Anita Malfatti made "O ESTUDO DO HOMEM" in 1915/16, using charcoal and pastel. Looking at the nude male figure, I imagine Anita, with a stick of charcoal in her hand, circling around her subject, mapping out the planes of the back. The charcoal feels thick and velvety as it fills in the figure. It's offset against these wispy marks of pastel in the background, a crazy combination of lime green, pea soup, and sickly yellow. I wonder what she was thinking when she made this work, and how her relationship to modern European art played into it. I wonder if she felt a kinship with Paula Modersohn-Becker who was also making really amazing figurative work at that time. I imagine she was working fast, moving quickly, trying to capture a form in its most distilled essence, like you see in German Expressionism or Cubism. In the end, this work reminds us that painting is an ongoing dialogue, where we draw inspiration from the past while pushing towards new horizons.