Devouring Nature: On Biomorphism and Transformation in the Works of Tarsila do Amaral

Tarsila do Amaral’s paintings of rural Brazilian landscapes present a natural world replete with vibrant colors, whimsical creatures, and luxuriant plant life. By co-opting aspects of surrealism’s visual lexicon, particularly biomorphism, Amaral created timeless myths that in their strangeness and indecipherability conveyed the uncertainly of the moment. When she exhibited these paintings in Paris in 1928, Amaral’s adoption of surrealist notions of transformation, ambiguity and uncertainly was on full display. Her landscapes of this period present dichotomies between the rational and the irrational, the natural and the artificial, order and chaos, thereby challenging Parisians’ imagined construct of Brazil, and creating an original and enigmatic interpretation of the natural world.