Author Description

Major retrospective catalogue on modernist artist Ernesto de Fiori (1884 -1945) who immigrated to Brazil in 1936. Perhaps the most unknown among the great Brazilian painters and sculptors, Italian-German Ernesto de Fiori was already a prestigious artist in Europe when he exiled himself in Brazil in 1936, fleeing from Nazi-fascism. His innovative techniques and advanced aesthetics have left a deep mark on São Paulo artists such as Volpi, Zanini, Galvez and Carnichelli. Later revised by the so-called "generation 80", De Fiori's work today includes the most important public and private collections in Brazil. The more than 150 images selected by curator Ivo Mesquita for this book show De Fiori's "Brazilian period" and his influence on the national arts, both in painting and in sculpture. In an illuminating and accessible text, Mesquita analyzes the course of the European artist refugee in the tropics, and compares his production to his contemporaries in São Paulo, raising new and surprising hypotheses.