Djanira da Motta e Silva - Numbered folder with 5 screen prints

Copy No. 240
One silkscreen is hand signed in pencil, all silkscreens are signed in the print

Dimensions 55x38 cm
In very good condition

When shipped this map will only be insured for €500 and sent by registered mail. Pick up free.

Djanira da Motta e Silva (June 20, 1914, in Avaré – May 31, 1979, in Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian painter, illustrator and engraver. She was known for her naïve art paintings, depicting ordinary Brazilian people, religious themes and landscapes.

At the age of 23, she was hospitalized with tuberculosis in São José dos Campos, where she made her first drawing: Christ on Golgotha. As her health improved, she continued her treatment in Rio de Janeiro, where she lived in Santa Teresa for its clean air. In 1930, she rented a small house nearby and set up a family pension. One of her guests, the painter Emeric Mercier, encouraged her and gave her painting lessons. Djanira also took evening classes in drawing at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios. During this period, she kept in touch with the couple Arpad Szenes and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, with Milton Dacosta, Carlos Scliar and others who lived in Santa Teresa and visited the art world.

In the late 1930s, in the capital of the state, she had her first evening classes in drawing at the School of Arts and Crafts and the painter Emeric Mercier, a tenant who hosted Djanira in Santa Teresa. She came into contact with the artists Carlos Scliar, Milton Dacosta, Árpád Szenes, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Jean-Pierre Chabloz, regular guests of the boarding house, which provided a stimulating environment and eventually led to her exhibition at the 48th National Salon of Fine Arts in 1942. The following year she held her first solo exhibition at the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). In 1945 she traveled to New York, where she saw the work of Pieter Bruegel and came into contact with Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Marc Chagall. Back in Brazil, she created the Candomblé mural for the residence of the writer Jorge Amado in Salvador and a panel for the Liceu Municipal de Petropolis. Between 1953 and 1954 she traveled to the Soviet Union to study.

Her paintings from the 1940s are usually dark, with subdued tones, such as gray, brown and black, but with a preference for geometric forms of discipline. In the following decade her palette diversified with vivid colors and some works deal with tonal gradations ranging from white to light gray. She presents in her human types an expression of solemn dignity.

In the late 1950s she painted Canela Indians from Maranhão. In 1950, during her stay in Salvador, she met José Shaw da Motta e Silva, the Motinha, a civil servant, born in Salvador on January 29, 1920. They married in Rio de Janeiro on May 15, 1952 and changed her name to Djanira da Motta e Silva.

Back in Rio de Janeiro, she was one of the leaders of the Salão Preto e Branco movement, an artists' protest against the high prices of painting materials. In 1963, she created the tile tableau Santa Barbara for the tunnel in the Santa Barbara chapel in Orange, Rio de Janeiro. In 1966, the company Cultrix published an album of poems and serigraphs by Djanira. In 1977, the National Museum of Fine Arts held a major retrospective of her work.

In the 1970s she went to the coal mines of Santa Catarina to experience the life of the miners first-hand, and traveled to Itabira, Minas Gerais to see the iron extraction service. In 1972 she became a nun in the Carmelite Order.[3]

Djanira continued to work with woodcuts, engravings and made drawings for tapestries and tiles. In production is the monumental tile tableau for the tunnel chapel of Santa Barbara (1958) in Rio de Janeiro. Her work was initially called "primitive", but has gradually gained more critical acclaim. According to the art critic Mário Pedrosa (1900-1981), Djanira is an artist who does not improvise and although her works look naive and instinctive, they are the result of careful preparation. (Source: Wikipedia)