The Projeto Portinari (Portinari Project) was established by João Candido Portinari[4] with initial support from FINEP and resources from FNDCT,[5] in 2 April 1979,[2][6] with the PUC-RJ,[3] for the rescue of Candido Portinari's work and its placing in public access.[2]

Projeto Portinari
Formation2 April 1979; 45 years ago (2 April 1979)
FounderJoão Candido Portinari[1]
Founded atRio de Janeiro
Legal statusActive
PurposeRescue of Portinari's work and allow "allows the artist's work to serve the greater goal of finding our cultural identity and preserving our national memory."[2]
HeadquartersPUC-RJ[3]
Official language
Portuguese
General-director[1][3]
João Candido Portinari
Websiteportinari.org.br

History

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[...] It is as a Brazilian that I feel it's my duty to work so that all of us may reencounter your work, and through it ourselves.

— João Candido Portinari, Introduction, [2]

Historical context

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In the years after the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship, several initiatives emerged to rescue Brazilian history,[4] with the movement of Diretas Já and the return of those exiled by the dictatorship.[7]

Origin

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In 1967, after 10 years living abroad and taking care of his academic formation, João Candido Portinari returned to Brazil, at the invitation of PUC-RJ to establish the Mathematics Department, of which he became director the following year.[4][3] As much as at first he preferred to distance himself from his father's work, he came close to seeing that his memory was being forgotten a mere 17 years after the painter's death[8][9] and impacted after revisiting the Van Gogh Museum in 1978,[10] in the following year within PUC-RJ, he established the Projeto Portinari[3] in a office loaned by Américo Jacobina Lacombe [pt], president from the Fundação Rui Barbosa.[10] In 1980, PUC-RJ finally officially welcomed the project.[10] In the same year, a Globo Repórter documentary about the painter directed by Eduardo Coutinho was made by Rede Globo in partnership with the Portinari Project.[10]

Until that time, as indicated in the O Globo article, Portinari, the painter: A famous unknown, more than 95% from the painter's work was out of public access,[11][12] and the whereabouts of most of the works were unknown to the extent that the "Museum of Modern Art of New York had more information about Portinari than all the Brazilian institutions gathered", according to the founder.[11]

Initially he based himself on documents from his father and those he inherited from his mother, who had been a memorialist in Portinari's history and for more than a decade Varig has subsidized its international trips.[10] The first 25 years were dedicated to the search of the artist's works in Brazil and beyond,[3][13] where the project received support from Rede Globo, Correios and Itamaraty.[10] Around 5,400 works were gathered (in 2000, 200 works were considered false and 500 were not located[14]), 25,000 documents and a 130-hour Oral History Program of later digitized interviews[14][3][15] and a Catalogue raisonné, whose founder claims to be the first of an artist in all of Latin America,[3][16][17] and the South of Ecuador.[10]

After the cataloguing phase, the project started to do educational activities, mainly focused on children and teenagers.[2][3]

Projects

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Candido Portinari

Some projects developed involve a virtual museum with Google Arts & Culture[18] the Projeto Pincelada, for the proof of authorship of artistic works,[19][9] the relaunch of the painter's poetry book[20] the re-launch, after more than 7 decades, alongside Antofágica, of illustrations made for The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas,[21][22] O alienista[23] the production of a mini-series supposed to be released in 2021[24] and even the restoration[25] followed by exposition in Brazil and France of the work War and Peace.[26]

Projeto Pincelada

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Using areas of artificial intelligence, neural networks, among others, the Projeto Pincelada (Brush Project) makes a macro photography of the paintings to establish their authenticity.[19][9]

Idealized in 1990 by João Candido, the goal was to enrich authorship recognition techniques through the "morphology of the author's brushstrokes" and George Svetlichny, from the Mathematics Department, had the idea to put a sample of brushstrokes in the Autoclass program, developed by NASA[27] and was first presented to the scientific public at Cambridge University by the founder of the Projeto Portinari in 1993.[9][28]

According to Professor Ruy Luiz Milidiú, the image is divided into several squares of 4mm x 4mm, which should contain the movement of a brush stroke.[9] The first phase of the project was to see if the program could differentiate Portinari's works from Enrico Bianco's, and the second phase was to compare them with the falsifications of Portinari's works.[9]

Catalogue raisonné

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Released in 2004[16] is a collection of 5 volumes, each representing the more than 4,600 works from the painter.[27][16]

Digitization

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Originally proposed in 1983[13] and started in 1984,[29] the project has sought to use new technologies to digitize Portinari's collection, after noting the difficulty of preserving the originals.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b "A mensagem de Portinari nunca esteve tão atual, diz filho do artista" ["Portinari's message has never been more current," says the artist's son.] (in Brazilian Portuguese). June 6, 2019. Archived from the original on December 7, 2019. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Introduction". Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Roseani Rocha (January 13, 2012). "A presença de Portinari" [The Portinari's Presence] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on May 3, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c Portinari 2000, p. 369.
  5. ^ Portinari 2000, p. 372.
  6. ^ "O tesouro de Portinari" (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2019-09-23. Retrieved 2022-08-14.
  7. ^ "Funarte celebra aniversário de Candido Portinari, um dos mais importantes pintores do Brasil" [Funarte celebrates the birthday of Candido Portinari, one of Brazil's most important painters]. 2020-12-29. Archived from the original on 2020-12-31. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  8. ^ Portinari 2000, pp. 369–370.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Catherine Beltrão (March 29, 2015). "O Projeto Portinari e a Inteligência Artificial" [Projeto Portinari and Artificial Intelligence] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g "Em nome do pai" [In name of his father]. 2018-07-24. Archived from the original on 2020-12-03. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
  11. ^ a b Portinari 2000, p. 370.
  12. ^ Fajardo da Fonseca, Elias (January 6, 1980). "Portinari, o pintor: um famoso desconhecido" [Portinari, the painter: A famous unknown]. O Globo (in Brazilian Portuguese). Brazil. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  13. ^ a b c Portinari 2000, p. 376.
  14. ^ a b Portinari 2000, p. 373.
  15. ^ "Projeto Portinari" (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  16. ^ a b c "Conheça o Catálogo Raisonné de Portinari através do Universia" [Get to know the Catalogue raisonné from through Universia] (in Brazilian Portuguese). October 29, 2004. Archived from the original on July 12, 2020. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
  17. ^ "Filho de Portinari acha roubo suspeito" [Portinari's son finds theft suspicious] (in Brazilian Portuguese). December 15, 2005. Archived from the original on July 12, 2020. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
  18. ^ "Museu virtual apresenta mais de 5.000 obras de Portinari" [Virtual Museum presents over 5,000 works by Portinari] (in Brazilian Portuguese). June 5, 2019. Archived from the original on June 8, 2019. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  19. ^ a b Portinari 2000, p. 374.
  20. ^ "Poesias de Portinari ganham edição com pinturas do criador" [Portinari poetries gain edition with paintings by the creator] (in Brazilian Portuguese). April 1, 2019. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  21. ^ Machado de Assis (2019). Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (in Brazilian Portuguese) (1 ed.). Antofágica. pp. 425–426. ISBN 978-65-80210-01-5. OCLC 1127067354.
  22. ^ "Ilustrações de Portinari para um clássico de Machado de Assis" [Portinari illustrations for a classic by Machado de Assis] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 19 August 2019. Archived from the original on August 19, 2019. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
  23. ^ "O ALIENISTA DE MACHADO DE ASSIS GANHARÁ NOVA EDIÇÃO" [The Alienist, by Machado de Assis, will receive a new edition] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on December 6, 2019. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
  24. ^ Lauro Jardim (July 12, 2020). "Obra de Portinari vai virar série" [Portinari's work will become a series] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
  25. ^ ""Guerra e Paz" de Portinari volta ao Brasil para exposição e restauração" ["War and Peace" by Portinari returns to Brazil for exhibition and restoration] (in Brazilian Portuguese). December 22, 2010. Archived from the original on July 20, 2020. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  26. ^ "War and Peace Project". Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  27. ^ a b Portinari 2000, p. 375.
  28. ^ "Verdade ou mentira?" [Original or falsification?] (in Brazilian Portuguese). October 10, 2016. Archived from the original on May 24, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  29. ^ "Portinari no computador" [Portinari in the computer]. Tribuna da Imprensa Rio de Janeiro (in Brazilian Portuguese). November 13, 1985. Retrieved July 20, 2020.

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