A primeira missa no Brasil 1948

Candido Portinari made this painting, "A primeira missa no Brasil," presumably with oils, though it’s the kind of image that makes you wonder what else he might have mixed in there. There’s this incredible tension between the flat shapes and the figures, which are modeled with a kind of lumpy, raw physicality. Look at the priest’s hands raised in blessing; they're built up with thick strokes, each dab and smear alive with energy, like he's literally shaping the air. The palette is earthy, browns and grays dominating, but punctuated by these bursts of brighter hues in the clothing of the kneeling figures. It makes me think of Léger, but with a kind of feverish intensity. Portinari definitely had something to say about power, faith, and colonialism. The ambiguity, and the roughness somehow makes it more affecting.