New Landscapes
In the 1950s, Tarsila undertook many commissions and projects for illustrations while continuing to participate in group exhibitions, such as the first two São Paulo Biennials.
Taking a look at her work retrospectively, she revisited and updated the motifs present in her previous compositions, experimenting with different formal registers and varying the manner in which she structured the geometric and organic shapes that characterize her pictorial vocabulary.
Ever attentive to changes around her, Tarsila followed the rhythm of the transformations taking place in the urban landscape of Brazil, especially São Paulo, with its blue-gray skyscrapers imposing their profiles over the older houses and the tropical vegetation of the city. She was also receptive to the latest visual codes. Towards the end of the 1950s, Geometric Abstraction and Informal art were booming among young artists. Landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx filled his multi-colored gardens with native plants while the great project of the construction of Brasilia—Brazil’s new capital—under the direction of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa had only just begun.