Maria Martins

About this book

Maria Martins (Campanha, Minas Gerais, 1894- Rio de Janeiro, 1973) is a fundamental artist in the history of Brazilian Modernism, in the panorama of international Surrealism, and in the history of world art in the twentieth century. She is known for her bronze sculptures, drawings, and engravings depicting hybrid female figures, as well as myths from Amazonian Indigenous, Afro-Brazilian and Classical Antiquity origins. This is the largest exhibition dedicated to the artist, and at MASP it is part of the two-year program dedicated to Brazilian Histories in 2021-22. It was in the 1940s, after moving to the United States, that Maria Martins became better known as an artist and cultural intermediary, quickly obtaining a place in the international art circuit. The fact that she developed much of her work abroad prevented her from actively participating in Brazilian modernist movements. However, Martins did not fail to carry out her unique readings and contributions regarding a certain Brazilian visuality, which ended up giving her the epithet sculptor of the tropics.ʺ The artist sought references for her earliest works in Amazonian myths and some aspects of the Afro-Brazilian culture in an exchange with the trends of Brazilian Modernism in the first half of the twentieth century. However, from the mid-1940s onwards, she set aside a visuality commonly associated with Brazil and began to create her myths in bronze sculptures of medium and large dimensions.