Vidas Secas

In modern Brazilian art there is a generation in the history of this massive country that touched the minds and imagination of all poets, artists, and musicians alike. From 1920 thru the 1950s, a draught struck the Northern regions of Brazil, the rivers dried up and healthy propserous people as well as the poor started to perish.

The Vidas Secas (Dry Lives) contain harrowing stories of entended families that packed their vital belongings and began walking south along the river beds twoard cities like São Paulo.

Not unlike Ireland's potato famine, the Vidas Secas radically altered Brazilian society and remains a perminent mark in the psycological inheritance of its people.

At Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) there is a tryptic of three large paintings Os retirantes by one of Brazil's greatest modern artists Cândido Portinari that if you have one will move your soul. The six foot tall canvases have, for Brazil, the equal impact as, perhaps, Picasso's Guernica has for Spain. Each panel depicts a taddered family of nine walking the dry river bed against a ravaged, desolated horizon and heat scorched earth. The sky is filled with the black shapes of vultures waiting for a meal of human remains. [The first panel is shown here]

In the center panel, the youngest child dies and each family member wails a river of tears resembling stones. Not even their tears produce needed fluid. Portinari´s brush makes you feel their wretched and unbreable loss. The final panel shows the mother fallen to her knees, hands desperately raised, fingers extended as if to ask God to take her too. The child is buried - the exodis goes on.

What strikes me most heavily as I sit for many minutes staring on a benched positioned in front of the three paintings - situated perhaps to cushon the emotional intensity - is when a Brazilian menina, of approximately 10 years old, approaches the canvases. I feel almost as if I want to step forward to cover her eyes as if I have witnessed a grostesque automobile accident with a beheaded body next to the road.

For days following of visit to MASP, I imagine I can see in each heart of the Paulistas I meet the unshakable sorrow of the Vidas Secas.

APOLOGY

Patricia tells me that the Vidas Secas is the title of a required text all Brazilian school kids are required to read by Graciliano Ramos about a family that transverses the Northern river beds for their survival. This families fate is similar to the one depicted in Portinari´s painting except for one detail. It is not a child who dies during the migration, instead the family dog. Still, the death of Baleia (the dog´s name ironically meaning whale) is as devasting for its innocence and pathos.