Anita Malfatti

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Anita Catarina Malfatti (1889–1964) was a Brazilian painter who introduced European and American modernist techniques to Brazil.

Born in São Paulo, to a family of Italian and American immigrants, Malfatti left Brazil for Germany in 1910. There, she was introduced to the beginnings of the modernist movement. She went to the United States in 1915, shortly after the Armory Show—an exposition of modernist art that was both scandalous and extremely influential—had changed the nature of art in that country. She studied at the Independent School of Art in New York, where she experimented with expressionism, until 1916, when she returned to Brazil.

In 1917 she displayed her own work in a solo show in São Paulo. The show was revolutionary for myriad reasons. The art scene in São Paulo was limited at the time in any case, and a solo show for an artist so young was unheard of. For a woman artist, it was revolutionary, and the artistic establishment in the city was already wary. However, the paintings themselves were strikingly modern in a city that had had no experience of such art, and the show provoked enormous disapproval, not only for the paintings' formal innovations but for their portrayal of immigrants and other marginalized figures. To many young artists in the city, on the other hand, it was a transformative experience. In particular, Malfatti struck up a friendship with poet Mário de Andrade that would last for decades and be professionally crucial for both of them.

Along with Andrade, Malfatti took part in the Week of Modern Art (Semana de Arte Moderna) in 1922. The Week was the organized start of Modernismo, the Brazilian modernist movement, within which Malfatti became a key figure. She was a member of the Group of Five formed after the Week of Modern Art, along with Andrade, poets Oswald de Andrade and Menotti del Picchia, and painter Tarsila do Amaral. She benefitted from the group's cohesion (which proved temporary, but by the time it broke apart in 1929 its members had established themselves). Her own show in 1917 had failed in part because she was the only artist in it, and it could not justify itself by being part of a larger movement. After 1922, her place in Brazilian art history, though still controversial, was at least more clearly understood. By the 1960s she was regarded as one of the key figures in Brazilian art and one of the first and most influential women artists in South America.