Antonio Henrique Amaral

Antonio Henrique Amaral (24 August 1935 in São Paulo, Brazil – 24 April 2015 in São Paulo) was a Brazilian painter and printmaker. He is best known for his images' artistic and political critiques in the form of a series of paintings of bananas that have been mutilated by forks and ropes.

Background Amaral was born in 1935 in São Paulo, Brazil. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Law from the Universidade de São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil. His interest in art stemmed from a visit to the 1st Biennial in São Paulo in 1951, where he was intrigued by the modern art he saw. In 1952, he took drawing classes from Roberto Sambonet through the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. Later, in 1957, he entered the School of Engraving and was trained to do woodcuts and linocuts by Lívio Abramo. Amaral's first solo exhibition came in 1958 when he showed a group of engravings at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In 1959 Amaral enrolled in the Pratt Graphic Institute in New York City where he learned wood engraving from Shiko Munakata and W. Rogalsky. In 1964, there was a coup d’état in Amaral's native Brazil that replaced the democratic government with a military dictatorship. This new government under the military juntas and the sociopolitical and economic effects it had would become the focus of many of his later paintings. In 1967, Amaral opened an exhibition of woodcuts entitled “O meu e o seu” (“Mine and Yours”), after which he switched to painting as his primary medium.

Tropicalismo The Tropicalismo movement that occurred in Brazil was mostly a musical movement, although it also had some aspects of literature, poetry, and visual art. The movement was a “cycle of intense creative activity and cultural transformation”

The Banana Paintings In 1964, General Humberto De Alencar Castelo Branco led a coup that replaced the existing government with a military junta. There was a severe recession, which led to popular dissatisfaction with the government. The government responded to peaceful protests with Institutional Act No. 5, which closed Congress, dissolved the veneer of democracy that existed at the time, allowed the regime to arrest, imprison without habeas corpus, and to censor, outlaw criticism, and repress the populace harshly. This is when the dictatorship tortured and often murdered anyone even suspected of opposing it. Without recourse to dialogue or democracy, a small portion of the opposition took to guerrilla resistance such as high-profile kidnappings in order to demand their comrades be freed from the dictatorship's torture chambers, and bank robberies. Among other things, Amaral's banana paintings reflected the human rights abuses of the regime and its support by the United States.

From 1968 to 1975, Antonio Henrique Amaral painted two series of paintings focused solely on bananas. The first, painted mainly from 1968 to 1972, was titled Brasilia, while the second, from 1973 to 1974, was titled Campos de batallha, or Battlefields. Brasiliana was more of a banana festival or, as the Brazilians would say, “bananas to sell and to give away.” These bananas were generally less corrupted than Amaral's later bananas but by the end of the series, these too have begun to rot and become entangled in ropes, mimicking the parrot's perch, the most common torture practice by the regime. The Campos de batalha series began around 1973, after Amaral moved back to New York City to avoid the intense censorship and possible retaliation by the Brazilian government. In this series, Amaral introduces sharp, metallic objects like forks and knives that penetrate and cut the bananas. Here he recreates what was happening to the bodies of those who dared resist the totalitarian regime. The economic importance of such a valuable resource was not lost on the Brazilians but they disliked it being the metaphor for behavior because unfortunately for the Brazilian, this export was taken advantage of and exploited by more prosperous countries, particularly the United States of America. Therefore the banana became synonymous with American imperialism and Brazilian dependence on richer countries. The transition from his earlier to his later banana paintings is characterized by the sharp, pointed objects in Battlefields. The objects are gray and black, reminding the viewer of technology and smoke. The forks and knives were metaphors for repression and torture. Battlefields is the confrontation between the inorganic and the organic, the machine and the body. The ropes and sharp objects directly represent the repression occurring under the military dictatorship. The fact that the Battlefield paintings are numbered not named reinforced the anonymity of the victims of the regime.

Works

Brasiliana, 1969 Detalhe de Corda, 1972 Campo de Batalha 3, 1973 Campo de Batalha 9, 1973 Campo de Batalha 22, 1974 Campo de Batalha 25, 1974 Campo de Batalha 30, 1974 Detalhe de folha, 1978 Expansão, 1977 Bambu, água e terra, 1978 Mar e Terra, 1984 Jogos de Cena, 1993 Instrumentos de amor e morte, 1995 Torsos em branco, 1995 Torsos, 1995 Torsos V, 1995 Anima & mania — a carta, 1996 Anima & mania — a guihotina, 1996

Exhibitions

1958 — São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, Brazil 1958 — Instituto de Arte Moderna do Chile, Santiago, Chile 1958 — Universidade de Concepción, Concepción, Chile 1959 — Pan American Union, Washington, DC, U.S. 1960 — Galeria Antigonovo, São Paulo, Brazil 1960 — Petite Galerie, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1963 — Galería Saber Vivir, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1963 — Galeria Mobilínea, São Paulo, Brazil 1967 — Galeria Astreia, SP, Brazil 1967 — Galeria Mirante das Artes, SP, Brazil 1968 — A.A.M.A.M. de São Paulo, Brazil 1969 — Galeria Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1970 — Galería Círculo 3, La Paz, Bolivia 1970 — Centro Pedagógico y Cultural de Portales, Cochobamba, Bolivia 1971 — Galeria Bonino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1971 — Pan American Union, Washington, DC, US 1971 — Galería Merkup, México, DF, México 1971 — Elvaston Gallery, London, England 1972 — Galerie de Theatre, Geneve, Switzerland 1972 — Galeria Socar Seraphico, Brasília, Brazil 1972 — Galeria Bonfiglioli, SP, Brazil 1973 — Galeria San Diego, Bogotá, Colombia 1974 — Lee Ault & Co. Gallery, New York, New York 1975 — Galeria Bonfiglioli, SP, Brazil 1975 — Galeria Bonino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1975 — Birmingham Art Museum, Birmingham, Alabama 1975 — Nashville Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee