A precocious artist, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti began his career at the age of eighteen in the world of caricature and cartoons for magazines and newspapers. Três mulatas (moças do interior) (1922) seeks a representation of a typically Brazilian stereotype, that of the mulata, a term used in Brazil in a racist and prejudiced way to refer to mixed-race people. In a reference to the classic theme of the Three Graces, the woman in front turns her back on the other two, each looks in one direction and they don’t look at each other, a construction that reinforces the opposition between the sense of unity between them and the isolation in which each one finds herself. The singularity of each is also marked by the difference in skin tone, which contrasts with the colours of the dresses. As in other representations of women from this phase, the title Girls from the Countryside (moças do interior) along with the simplicity of the clothes and the absence of jewellery or any other adornment highlight the characters’ humble social origins in an idealisation of the povo (common people) typical of many Brazilian Modernists’ social class and elitism.
—Fernando Oliva
