"I sold very little and I couldn't pay a debt. There were many compliments, but man doesn't live on glory alone…"

• Unpublished handwritten letter from Emiliano Di Cavalcanti to a friend.
• In Portuguese.
• A leaf.
• 19 cm x 25.7 cm.
• Paris, January 1, 1939.
• Good condition of conservation.
• Unique piece.

Transcript of the letter

Paris, January 1, 1939

My old friend

This is the first letter of 1939… Another year of this painful existence that God gave me. Finally, life is coming to an end. I am writing to you at half past midnight [in] a café, next to the Radio, and that is why the paper is horrible. What 1939 will bring me. I do not know, nor do I want to predict. 1938 ended with an exhibition of mine. I sold very little and was unable to pay a debt. There were many compliments, but man does not live on glory alone… Your letters are scarce, which does not stop bothering me, because I think about a million things. However, I believe that you are in good health and that nothing has happened to Ignez. I am extremely tired. This stupid job at the Radio is killing me and I need something else, which is difficult to find. Sometimes I miss Brazil so much. On days of / great cold, I only remember my Paquetá, of this heat there. / Tomorrow Noemia will live apart from me, she rented a studio / and is very happy. I hope she is happy and works / hard in her new home. / This letter is to wish you a Happy New Year. You are the / only friend from Brazil who remembers me. I have the impression that / besides you, no one else from Brazil knows / that I exist. Hugs to Ignez and […]

Yours / Di Cavalcanti (signed)

There is no Brazilian among the 200 million people who live in the country who does not know the name of Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (1897 - 1976). The great modernist painter, who illustrated the colors of Brazil and popularized national art around the world, is still present in the popular imagination, but what was the life of the man behind the prestigious artist like? After all, Cavalcanti also went through times of war, longing and melancholy.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1897, Di Cavalcanti, while still young, came across paints and brushes by creating illustrations for the magazine Fon Fon. In 1916, he moved to São Paulo to study law, but soon began to frequent the studio of the impressionist George Fischer Elpons. From then on, he never left the canvases, devising the Modern Art Week at the Teatro Municipal de São Paulo, joining the Communist Party, marrying the painter Noêmia Brandão, and finally settling in Paris, in the turbulent 1930s.

However, his stay in the City of Light does not seem to have been smooth sailing for the artist, a secret he revealed in an intimate letter written to a friend. In his own words, Cavalcanti says that his work on the radio at that time tired and bored him. The great painter also states that, at the beginning of the year, he had a huge debt that worried him and made him have low expectations for 1939. Little did he know that that would be his last year in France, since, with the outbreak of World War II, Di would return to Brazil for one of the most fertile phases of his career as a painter.

Back in his homeland, Cavalcanti would openly fight against abstractionism, travel to Uruguay and Argentina, exhibit in the city of Buenos Aires, and meet Zuília, who would become one of his favorite muses, in addition to illustrating books by renowned figures such as Vinícius de Moraes and Jorge Amado. He would also return to Paris in 1946 to look for some of his missing paintings, but after the Second World War, this would be a new world.

However, still at the end of the 1930s, Cavalcanti tells us in his letter how much he misses Brazil and the warmth of his Paquetá; and he also reveals that his wife, Noêmia, would move to a studio even if they remained married. The artist wishes her happiness, but did he not feel alone?

The beginning of 1939 was certainly a difficult time for the great artist, marked by longing, melancholy and doubts. Finally, Di Cavalcanti returned to Brazil to soon return to conquer the world, teaching that sometimes a step back is also a step forward, and, above all, showing that life is made up of movements, sometimes linear, but mostly pendular, a back and forth that often lacks meaning or explanation for those who sail its waves, but always follows its destiny.

Di Cavalcanti is one of the main names in Brazilian painting and letters from him are very rare, especially with relevant content like this.