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Lot Essay
José Pancetti once declared, "Everything I paint is with love. I only know how to paint with love."[1] The artist understood painting as a reflection of his life experience, and he depicted what he knew and loved best. Born Giuseppe Giannini to working class Italian parents in the state of São Paulo, Pancetti was sent off to live with his uncle in Italy, where he spent the greater part of his troubled youth. He returned to Brazil in 1920 working odd jobs until he joined the navy in 1922, the precise moment when Brazilian modernism had its inaugural event, Semana de Arte Moderna (or Modern Art Week), in São Paulo. It was on board a battleship that Pancetti travelled the world and became initiated as a painter. He first undertook jobs touching up the ship's walls, but later gained a reputation among sailors for his painting skill. In his journal he wrote about his ambitions to "paint that which my eyes saw during this crazy career at sea."[2] He began by painting on small matchboxes, which he later traded for cigarettes. In 1933 he joined a recently created collaborative of artists known as the Núcleo Bernadelli, where he came under the wing of the Polish painter Bruno Lechowsky, who was the first to nurture Pancetti's development as an artist. That same year he had his first exhibit at the National Salon of Fine Arts in Rio, where he continued to exhibit regularly thereafter.
Regarded as a superb colorist, Pancetti's oeuvre included still-lifes and portraits, though he is best known as the painter of landscapes, and in particular seascapes, always faithful to and nostalgic for his past life as a sailor. His canvases were typically small to medium sized, because as the itinerant artist explained, after completion he would have to transport the works from one place to another.[3] During the 1950s, the last phase of his artistic career (before his premature death in 1958), he became enamored with the pristine, tropical landscapes of the Bahian coast, where he moved in 1950. Marinha is part of a series of seascapes extolling the natural beauty of a famed lagoon in Salvador, Bahia. The signature thin and smooth brushstrokes, and rigorous geometric order of the composition, consistent with Pancetti's technique, are punctuated by vivid bursts of color. Moving away from the more somber, melancholic palette he had become known for, Marinha pays homage to the vibrant luminosity and picturesque scenery of the region.
Elena Shtromberg, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Utah
1 Denise Mattar, Pancetti, o marinheiro só (Salvador: Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia), 23.
2 Denise Mattar, 14.
3 José Roberto Teixeira Leite, José Pancetti, o pintor-marinheiro: Estudo crítico biográfico seguido do catálogo racional de sua obra. (Rio de Janeiro: Fundao Conquista, 1979), 41.
Regarded as a superb colorist, Pancetti's oeuvre included still-lifes and portraits, though he is best known as the painter of landscapes, and in particular seascapes, always faithful to and nostalgic for his past life as a sailor. His canvases were typically small to medium sized, because as the itinerant artist explained, after completion he would have to transport the works from one place to another.[3] During the 1950s, the last phase of his artistic career (before his premature death in 1958), he became enamored with the pristine, tropical landscapes of the Bahian coast, where he moved in 1950. Marinha is part of a series of seascapes extolling the natural beauty of a famed lagoon in Salvador, Bahia. The signature thin and smooth brushstrokes, and rigorous geometric order of the composition, consistent with Pancetti's technique, are punctuated by vivid bursts of color. Moving away from the more somber, melancholic palette he had become known for, Marinha pays homage to the vibrant luminosity and picturesque scenery of the region.
Elena Shtromberg, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Utah
1 Denise Mattar, Pancetti, o marinheiro só (Salvador: Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia), 23.
2 Denise Mattar, 14.
3 José Roberto Teixeira Leite, José Pancetti, o pintor-marinheiro: Estudo crítico biográfico seguido do catálogo racional de sua obra. (Rio de Janeiro: Fundao Conquista, 1979), 41.