Praia De Jurujuba 1940

Alberto da Veiga Guignard captured Praia De Jurujuba with oil on canvas, and its the brushwork that really grabs me. The short, deliberate strokes, all those little hatch marks, it's like he's building the scene, color by color. Looking closer, you can see how Guignard uses texture. The paint isn't smoothed out; it's present, it's there on the surface. Take the big tree on the right – see the way he's built up the paint to define the trunk and branches? The colors shift from pale green to brown to almost black. It’s like you could reach out and feel the rough bark. It’s this kind of intimate focus that reminds me a little of Pierre Bonnard. Like Bonnard, Guignard finds a way to make the ordinary feel totally magical. This painting is about seeing, about feeling, and about the ongoing conversation of painting itself.