A self-taught painter, and the daughter of an Austrian mother and a father of indigenous background, Djanira, as she preferred to be called, emerged on the Brazilian art scene in the 1940s. With an interest in everyday life, vernacular Brazilian culture, representations of labour and workers, and the cultural diversity of her country, Djanira travelled across Brazil and translated into paintings the reality that she insisted on seeing up close. In a 1976 statement, the painter declared that this experience was “richer in plastic teachings than the sterility of formalisms neither felt nor lived”. In 1960, Djanira travelled to Maranhão in north-eastern Brazil, where she spent time with the Canela people (today self-named as the Timbira). In a representation entirely void of romanticism, two children display their body paint, while their legs and feet blend in with the roots of the tree that supports them. This work reflects not only Djanira’s interest in indigenous graphism, but marks the artist’s encounter with her indigenous ancestry, partly lost in the miscegenation process but always claimed by the artist as her roots.
This is the first time the work of Djanira da Motta e Silva is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Isabella Rjeille
