Looking back at the issue of a lecture given at Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo, Brazil) in 2003, this article, based on the analysis of Tropical, canvas painted by Anita Malfatti in 1917, proposes that the artist, contrary to what has traditionally been stated, was undergoing a change in her pictorial language, distancing herself from the vanguard conceptions she had been embracing up to that date. In so doing, she would align with the international trend of the Rappel à l'ordre and approach the discussions on nationalism in art, present in the art millieu of São Paulo city. Thus, the image of an insecure woman who changed her perspective because of the famous review by Monteiro Lobato, acquires another connotation. Modernists would have preferred, and reiterated, this interpretation instead of making an analysis of Anita Malfatti's work per se, through which a volunteer desertion from the vanguard program could be unveiled.
Anita Malfatti; modernism; modernism in art; rappel à l'ordre; Monteiro Lobato