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Key words : Brazil, modernism, painting practice, egg tempera, revival, phenomenology, Italian Trecento
This paper aims to trace the transnational network of 20th c. painters engaged in the Egg Tempera Revival, which evolved in Europe and the US but also included a key nexus in postwar Brazil. The renewed interest in the stable and inexpensive tempera medium was precipitated in 19th c. Germany and Italy by a number of factors: the dissatisfaction of many artists with the quality of early industrially produced artists' oil paints; the rediscovery and translation of classic treatises such as Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte (c. 1390); major advances in organic chemistry; and the increase in scientific techniques available for the technical study of Old Master paintings, which allowed the revision of historic misreadings. The revival was spearheaded by painters such as Arnold Böcklin and Puvis de Chavannes and lasted until about 1940.
This period recently received considerable scholarly interest, but much less known are the parallel developments within Modernist painting practice in Latin America. Our paper examines in detail the role of the Italian-born Alfredo Volpi, who taught several artists the technique, including Concrete artists such as Waldemar Cordeiro, Hermelindo Fiaminghi and Luiz Sacilotto, as well as the German-born Eleonore Koch (1926-2018) , whose life and work unfolded between Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and London. Her compositions rarely consist of more than two or three objects, situated in front of large monochrome expanses, exuding both a sense of solitude and order. Koch's work, which eluded all classifications of its time, is overdue a reappraisal that includes aspects of his material practice,
The previous, although scarce, scholarship on Koch's work stressed the master-pupil dynamic of her relationship with Volpi as well as their supposed attachment to both Modernist aesthetics and painting's Western tradition. This recent reappraisal, however, expands the understanding of her practice to explore both materiality and phenomenology. It addresses flatness, abstraction and purity of means, key concepts in modern art, from perspectives that clearly depart from that tradition and consider new meanings in contemporaneity. Thus, egg tempera unexpectedly becomes a logical choice that enabled Koch to explore, through her art, matters at the center of discussions about representation and image-making.
(Key words : Brazil, modernism, painting practice, egg tempera, revival, phenomenology, Italian Trecento
This paper aims to trace the transnational network of 20th c. painters engaged in the Egg Tempera Revival, which evolved in Europe and the US but also included a key nexus in postwar Brazil. The renewed interest in the stable and inexpensive tempera medium was precipitated in 19th c. Germany and Italy by a number of factors: the dissatisfaction of many artists with the quality of early industrially produced artists' oil paints; the rediscovery and translation of classic treatises such as Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte (c. 1390); major advances in organic chemistry; and the increase in scientific techniques available for the technical study of Old Master paintings, which allowed the revision of historic misreadings. The revival was spearheaded by painters such as Arnold Böcklin and Puvis de Chavannes and lasted until about 1940.
This period recently received considerable scholarly interest, but much less known are the parallel developments within Modernist painting practice in Latin America. Our paper examines in detail the role of the Italian-born Alfredo Volpi, who taught several artists the technique, including Concrete artists such as Waldemar Cordeiro, Hermelindo Fiaminghi and Luiz Sacilotto, as well as the German-born Eleonore Koch (1926-2018) , whose life and work unfolded between Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and London. Her compositions rarely consist of more than two or three objects, situated in front of large monochrome expanses, exuding both a sense of solitude and order. Koch's work, which eluded all classifications of its time, is overdue a reappraisal that includes aspects of his material practice,
The previous, although scarce, scholarship on Koch's work stressed the master-pupil dynamic of her relationship with Volpi as well as their supposed attachment to both Modernist aesthetics and painting's Western tradition. This recent reappraisal, however, expands the understanding of her practice to explore both materiality and phenomenology. It addresses flatness, abstraction and purity of means, key concepts in modern art, from perspectives that clearly depart from that tradition and consider new meanings in contemporaneity. Thus, egg tempera unexpectedly becomes a logical choice that enabled Koch to explore, through her art, matters at the center of discussions about representation and image-making.)
F. Pitta, “Eleonore Koch: mundo ordenado”, in: Eleonore Koch: mundo ordenado , exh. cat. Centro Universitário Maria Antonia, São Paulo 2009, 5-7
F. Pitta, “Chronology”, in: Lore Koch , Cosac Naify, São Paulo 2013, 232-243
Tempera Painting 1800–1950. Experiment and Innovation from the Nazarene Movement to Abstract Art , P. Dietemann, W. Neugebauer, E. Ortner, R. Poggendorf, E. Reinkowski-Häfner and H. Stege (eds.), Archetype Publications and Doerner Institut, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich and London 2019
P. Gottschaller, T. Learner and J. Mazurek, “Hermelindo Fiaminghi's Quadrature of the Circle between 1954 and 1959: From Concrete Enamel to Giotto's Tempera,” in: Purity Is a Myth: The Materiality of Concrete Art in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay , Z. Gilbert et al. (eds.), Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2021, 105-123
Dr Pia Gottschaller is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Technical Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK. She is the recipient of a number of research grants and scholarships, most recently from the Getty Foundation (2021). Her monographs, edited volumes and essays focus on postwar European, US- and Latin American painting practice.
https://courtauld.ac.uk/people/pia-gottschaller/
Dr Fernanda Pitta is an Assistant Professor at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. Her curatorial work includes Eleonore Koch: open space (MAR, Rio de Janeiro 2022). She is currently editing a major publication on the work of Eleonore Koch (to be published in 2024) and preparing a retrospective of Koch at MAC USP, São Paulo, for 2024 .
This paper aims to trace the transnational network of 20th c. painters engaged in the Egg Tempera Revival, which evolved in Europe and the US but also included a substantial nexus in postwar Brazil. We examine the role of Alfredo Volpi, who taught not only Concrete painters this technique, but also Eleonore Koch (1926-2018). Scholarship so far has focused on their master-pupil dynamic and supposed adherence to Modernist aesthetics. We instead aim to propose a reading of Koch’s practice through the lenses of materiality and phenomenology, which posits the medium of egg tempera as a logical choice that enabled Koch to explore key issues in the discourse on representation and image-making.