"...the focus is on the two sailors in the foreground who are manning the ship, not on the actual discovery seen in the background. By his placement of these powerful figures, Portinari indicated that the historical event of discovery is of secondary importance in his narrative. As art historian Clarival do Prado Valladares has commented, this placement "inverts the herarchy in relation to the importance of the painting". Of all four murals, the figures of the anonymous sailors most clearly resemble Portinari's earlier idealizations of Brazil's poor workers..."(*)
(*) Daly, Karen D. Candido Portinari: Brazilian artist as cultural Ambassador: a re-examination of the Library of Congress murals. Richmond, VA, 1995. 145p. (thesis)
|
