Working Men and Women

After separating from Oswald de Andrade, Tarsila was deeply affected by the New York stock exchange crash in late 1929. Her properties were mortgaged and she had to get used to a much more modest lifestyle than she previously enjoyed.

Together with Osório César, a young doctor and left-wing intellectual, she took an interest in the economic and social model of the Soviet government. Both her trip to the USSR and her political ideas—which led to her imprisonment in 1932 under the regime of Getúlio Vargas—influenced the content and style of her new paintings, which followed the precepts of Social Realism.

 
The working classes, previously evoked through anonymous silhouettes in her paintings of the 1920s, now became the true protagonists of her social frescos, as lively colors gave way to more somber hues.

Although, as early as 1937, the dictatorship relegated women artists to traditional models and intimate themes, Tarsila continued to cast a critical and poetical gaze on the realm of work in rural, urban, and industrial contexts, and to concern herself with the situation of women in the workforce.