Gilberto Trompowsky: a trajetória do artista na modernidade carioca

Abstract

This dissertation delineates the artistic history of Gilberto Trompowsky Livramento (1901- 1982), whose diverse oeuvre resided at the periphery of the dominant historiography of Brazilian modernism. The investigation relies on documentary and archival research, acknowledging the fragmented nature of institutional and personal collections to reconstruct a narrative that deviates from biographical linearity, favoring an analysis of the artist's positions within the arts field. The study analyzes how education at the National School of Fine Arts, time spent in Candido Portinari's studio, and instruction at the UDF Institute of Arts solidified his symbolic capital. It also examines educational institutions as arenas of negotiation among artistic movements; the networks of intellectual and bohemian sociability that influenced cosmopolitanism of the federal capital; and the studio as a hybrid space of production, public image, and social legitimation. By highlighting Trompowsky's presence in illustrated press, theater, and carnival, it is demonstrated that esthetic modernization in Brazil occurred in a diverse manner, thru "alternative modernisms" that expanded visual culture beyond traditional supports. His work, primarily developed in Rio de Janeiro, offers a counterpoint to canonical narratives by exposing a modernity constituted in the articulation between worldly sociability and decorative arts.