On the 11th December 1972 Law No 5859 was passed by the Brazilian Parlament establishing domestic work as a profession, giving domestic workers a series of rights which they hadn’t enjoyed before. This transformed their status from that of semi-slavery to that of professional worker. This changed the relationship between employer and employee forever, since they now had workers rights and a signed card.
Acrylic on Canvas. ‘Feeding Baby’. 75x95 cm
‘I draw your attention to these characters by Ana Maria, which seem to emerge from a controlled plastic existence. This young artist has until now pursued a conventional primitive style. Her faces were expressionless, her crowds were engulfed in an atmosphere of frivolity betrayed by her flat colours and the banality of her compositions. Then all of a sudden there she was, extracting from all this a figure of suffering, a dark ecstatic woman immersed in domestic work, a face enlarged and crudely contoured in the style of pop. Ana Maria’s women remind us of Pietrina Checcacci and Vanda Pimentel of old. Different intentions in plastic terms and colours with naught in common, but the attitude and the solitude are the same.
Yet the women of Pietrina and Vanda are literally the mistresses of this dark and perplexed world of Ana, offering hope in the spotless toilet of the half nude torso. We have before us a young artist, a painter who was able to stay in touch with her naïve beginnings and at the same time to move on from the world of festive landscapes and be touched by the people who inspired her at a critical moment in their lives. So let us celebrate in her one of these new realists who distort the conventional vision in their search for a more universal viewpoint’.
Walmir Ayala (Rio de Janeiro 1972)
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