Category talk:Brazilian painters

LEVINO FANZERES

Levino de Araujo-Fanzeres -- Born 1884 Cachoeiro de Itapemirin, Espírito Santo, Brazil. Death in 1956, Rio de Janeiro. Painter, professor, engraver, lecturer, designer and founder of the Colmeia, an open air institution wich reached the amount of more than 300 pupils and has been the place for initiation of many famous brazilian contemporary artists from 20th Century, like Ivan Serpa, Lygia Clark, Sergio Telles, Ismael Nery, Arpad Szenes, Garcia Bento and Almir Mavignier.

Levino Fanzeres has made his first art studies at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios (Arts and Crafts) in Rio de Janeiro and in 1911 won the most important brazilian art award. He travelled to France with his wife Isolina, also painter and sculptor, and worked in Paris until 1917 in his studio at Boulevard Raspail. He had probations by Andre Lhote and Ferdinand Cormon at the Academie Julien. In spite of the artistic revolution in Paris, Levino Fanzeres remained an almost traditional landscape painter, with technic influencies from his teacher Baptista da Costa. As a great lover of the untouched telluric beauty of the brazilian land, he reached later his own expression with dense paintings describing wild, shady landscapes in dramatic sunsets. His wife Isolina Machado Fanzeres (1892-1932) graduated at the Escola de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro, also achieved honour distinctions and executed an small but significant amount of sculptures and paintings. In 1938 Levino Fanzeres participated of an important group exhibition of Brazilian art in New York. Levino Fanzeres´s father was Salvador de Araujo-Fanzeres, an wood sculptor and images maker, descendent of a traditional and wealthy portuguese family, specialised in religious workmanship -(Arte Sacra-), as well goldsmithes from north Portugal. Levino´s mother was Maria Josepha de Vasconcellos, a teacher and director of an upper grade school in Cachoeiro do Itapemirin. Levino Fanzeres has travelled all over Brazil from south to north. He steamed through the Amazon river until Peru, collecting images from rivers, prairie landscapes and sunsets. As a great lover of the nature of his country, he spent his all life working and teaching. His paintings are in all gouvernment court-houses of all states in Brazil as well in museums. An important bibliography in portuguese on Levino Fanzeres is available