My grandmother, actress Nydia Licia, passed away in 2015. Up until that point, my first studio had been a small room on the back of her house. I'd lived for quite some time with the vast collection of her theatre career, which documented to some extent the advent of modern professional theatre in Brazil. Between 2009 and 2010, inspired by all that material, I produced a series of paintings based on the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (Brazilian Comedy Theatre). Each painting portrays at least one actress, one director and one play
Maria Della Costa played Vassilissa in Maxim Gorki's The Lower Depths (translated into Brazilian Portuguese as "Ralé", a word used frequently to refer to an empoverished and marginalized lower class, the riff-raff), directed by Flamínio Bollini Cerri in 1951. It was the only time the actress took part in any of the company's productions. However, it was considered one of the "greatest artistic successes" of the TBC (source).
Scenography created by Túlio Costa had sturdy wooden structures in a time when it was standard procedure to have the whole scenery painted on thin wood boards instead of actually building it like they did for this particular play. That was my inspiration for the edges of the painting, done in simple, crude and untreated pine wood. Aggressive like the environment of the play.
Some areas of the painting bare details extracted from the original program of the play and transferred to the canvas using paint thinner, a process used by such painters as Robert Rauchenberg in the sixties. The excerpts are texts about the author and cast, as well as words from the director.
The Lower Depths - Maria Della Costa
November 2009
Oil and solvent transfer on canvas and pinewood frame
100 x 80 cm
Click to see details of the transfers:
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