Djanira da Motta e Silva: life and works

Djanira da Motta e Silva (20 June 1914, in Avaré – 31 May 1979, in Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian painter, illustrator and engraver, known by her first name Djanira. She was known for her naïve art paintings, depicting Brazilian common people, religious themes and landscapes.

Djanira was born in Avaré, daughter of Oscar de Paiva Pia Job Paiva was initially registered.

At 23, she was hospitalized later than tuberculosis in São José dos Campos where she made her first drawing: Christ upon Golgotha. As her health improved, she continued treatment in Rio de Janeiro, residing in Santa Teresa, because of its tidy air. In 1930, she rented a small home in the neighborhood and installed a associates pension. One of her guests, the painter Emeric Mercier, encouraged her and gave her painting lessons. Djanira in addition to attended a night drawing course at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios. In this era she kept in lie alongside with the couple Arpad Szenes and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, with Milton Dacosta, Carlos Scliar, and others buzzing in Santa Teresa and attending the art world.

In the late 1930s, in the make a clean breast capital, she had her first evening drawing classes in art suggestion in the School of Arts and Crafts and the painter Emeric Mercier, a tenant Djanira hosts in Santa Teresa. She had contact with the artists Carlos Scliar, Milton Dacosta, Árpád Szenes, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Jean-Pierre Chabloz, regulars of the pension, which provided a stimulating vibes and eventually led to her exhibition at the 48th National Salon of Fine Arts in 1942. In the following year, she held her first solo accomplishment in the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). In 1945, she traveled to New York where she maxim the function of Pieter Bruegel and came into edit with Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Marc Chagall. Back in Brazil, she created the Candomblé mural for the quarters of the writer Jorge Amado, in Salvador, and a panel for the Liceu Municipal de Petropolis. Between 1953 and 1954, she traveled to chemical analysis in the Soviet Union.

Her paintings of the 40s are usually dark, using subdued tones, such as gray, brown and black, but in the same way as a proclivity for geometric forms of discipline. In the afterward decade, her palette diversified as soon as vibrant colors, and some works settlement with tonal gradations ranging from white to lighthearted gray. She presents in her human types an freshening of solemn dignity.

At the subside of the 1950s, she painted Canela Indians of Maranhão. In 1950 during her stay in Salvador she met José Shaw da Motta e Silva, the Motinha, civil servant, born in Salvador upon January 29, 1920. She got married in Rio de Janeiro upon May 15, 1952, and tainted her name to Djanira da Motta e Silva.

Back to Rio de Janeiro, she was one of the leaders of the Salão Preto e Branco movement, an artists’ protest adjoining the tall prices of the painting material. In 1963, she created the tile panel Santa Barbara for the tunnel in the Santa Barbara chapel, Orange, Rio de Janeiro. In the year 1966, the Cultrix company published an album of poems and silkscreen prints from Djanira. In 1977, the National Museum of Fine Arts held a major retrospective of her work.

In the 1970s, she went to the Santa Catarina coal mines to experience closely the miners’ lives, and traveled to Itabira to look the iron parentage service. In 1972, she became a nun of the Carmelite Order.

Djanira yet worked behind woodcuts, engraving, and made drawings for tapestries and tiles. In production, there is the monumental tile panel for tunnel Santa Barbara chapel (1958) in Rio de Janeiro. Initially called “primitive”, her put on an act has gradually achieved greater necessary acclaim. As sour out by the art critic Mário Pedrosa (1900-1981), Djanira is an artiste who does not improvise and, although they have a naive and brute appearance, her works are the upshot of careful preparation.