Cássio M'Boy

Cássio M'Boy (Mineiros do Tietê, São Paulo, 1903 - São Paulo, SP, 1986)

Cássio M'Boy was a painter, sculptor, decorator, designer, costume designer, and stained glass artist. He began his studies in drawing and anatomy classes taught by the German painter Georg Elpons (1865-1939) in São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, he attended classes at the National School of Fine Arts (ENBA). During the 1920s, he came into contact with the São Paulo Modernist group and began producing prints for fabrics, furniture design, and decorative projects. During this same period, he lived in Embu, São Paulo, where he sculpted images of saints.

In 1934, he participated in the 1st São Paulo Salon of Fine Arts, in the applied arts category. Three years later, he won an award at the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Paris for his sculpture "Flight into Egypt." In 1938, he exhibited his work at the Salão de Maio, a period during which he also worked as a decorator.

He held his first solo exhibition in 1950 at the Assis Chateaubriand Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP). That same year, he participated in the Tokyo Salon in Japan, and in 1952, he was part of the Brazilian delegation to the 26th Venice Biennale. He held two more solo exhibitions, in 1961 and 1970, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ) and Paço das Artes in São Paulo, respectively.

After his death, the carpets he designed in the 1930s were included in the exhibitions Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/SP in 1998 and MAM/RJ in 1999; and Brazilian Art Deco: Fulvia and Adolpho Leirner Collection, at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (PESP), in 2008.

Critical Commentary

Cássio M'Boy's decorative work, creating designs for furniture, tapestries, and small sculptures, is primarily guided by the Art Deco style. In the abstract-geometric rugs of the 1930s, the composition is achieved through the juxtaposition, in different directions, of semicircles and rectangles whose colors create a sense of volume and depth. In the small sculptures, such as "Figure," c. 1930, a continuous, elongated, elegant line defines a body that bends to tie a feather to its ankle.

During the same period, he worked with religious themes, sculpting images of saints, and soon began to dedicate himself entirely to painting popular and religious themes. M'Boy apparently separates the formal solutions employed in the "applied arts" from the visual procedures that organize the rest of his artistic production. The compositional logic of these works is similar to so-called "naive" or "primitive" painting, despite the artist having formal training and deliberately seeking this type of visual solution. In this production, the image becomes less illusionistic.

M'Boy is known primarily for this phase of his work, understood as a painter of folkloric themes, to the point that Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) stated that M'Boy was the embodiment of folklore itself. According to critic José Geraldo Vieira, this interpretation is due, above all, to the "very rustic domestic setting" and the "crude processes" and "simple themes" he uses.

Notes
1 PONTUAL, Roberto. Dictionary of the Visual Arts in Brazil. Introduction by Antônio Houaiss. Texts by Mário Barata et al. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1969, p.351.

Criticism

"People still insist on including Cássio M'Boy among the naive or primitive painters. This legend stems more from his rustic domestic environment and the crude methods he uses for simple themes than from his art itself (...). The truth is that Cássio M'Boy established himself as a painter of hagiological and folkloric subjects, from which he never strayed in his bucolic hibernation studio. Initially a costume designer and a sculptor with a hand-crafted platform, he soon acquired virtuosity in lines, shapes, volumes, colors, and composition. But the scenes, the human figures, as well as the episodes, complemented by the animals, the flowers, the mountains, the roads, the waterfalls; everything is drawn and colored with a populist mentality and simple".
José Geraldo Vieira
PONTUAL, Roberto. Dictionary of the visual arts in Brazil. Introduction by Antônio Houaiss. Texts by Mário Barata et al. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1969.

Solo Exhibitions

1950 - São Paulo SP - First solo exhibition, at MASP
1958 - São Paulo SP - Solo exhibition, at the Folha de S. Paulo Gallery
1960 - São Paulo SP - Solo exhibition, at the São Luiz Gallery
1961 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo exhibition, at MAM/RJ
1970 - São Paulo SP - Solo exhibition, at Paço das Artes
1985 - São Paulo SP - The Caipira Paintings of Cássio M'Boy, at the Encontro das Artes Gallery

Collective Exhibitions

1934 - São Paulo SP - Participates, with two sculptures and a felt panel, in the Flávio de Carvalho exhibition, closed by the police.
1934 - São Paulo SP - 1st Paulista Salon of Fine Arts, on Rua 11 de Agosto.
1937 - Paris (France) - International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques of Paris - gold medal.
1938 - São Paulo SP - May Salon.
1952 - Venice (Italy) - 26th Venice Biennale.
ca. 1952 - Tokyo (Japan) - International Painting Exhibition.
1960 - São Paulo SP - Leirner Collection, at the Folhas Art Gallery.
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th National Salon of Visual Arts, at MAM/RJ
1985 - São Paulo SP - The Art of the Imaginary, at the Encontro das Artes Gallery

Posthumous Exhibitions

1996 - Osasco SP - Expo FIEO: donation by Luiz Ernesto Kawall, at the Fieo University Center
1998 - São Paulo SP - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/SP
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection, at MAM/RJ
2002 - São Paulo SP - Pop Brazil: popular art and the popular in art, at CCBB
2002 - São Paulo SP - Santa Ingenuidade, at Unifieo