Emigrant Ship

This painting of Segall, a great allegory of emigration, is the center of this exhibition. The display also includes the annotated drawings, engravings, sculptures, photographs, and documents related to this theme and to the artist's creative process.

In 1935, Mário de Andrade introduced the young painter, Lucy Citti Ferreira, to Segall. Lucy began to attend the artist's studio, working alongside him and assisting in the documentation of his work.

For the first time in my life I saw the sea and ships. I saw how men of all nationalities climbed aboard these ships and went on to distant and unknown worlds, driven by destiny and something else... I did not let go of my pencil for a moment, which I used continually to fix my traveling companions and models on paper, these emigrants in whom the whole of humanity seems to be reflected.

Lasar Segall "My Memories" (1950).

A ship is a large vessel, usually with one or more decks, which is capable of carrying cargo and/or passengers. In the "Navio de Emigrantes," Segall creates curious dialogues between the human forms and details of the ship, such as the circular vents, which look like eyeless heads watching the world around them.

Sailors frequently appear in the work of Segall in the subjects connected to the "Emigration" series. In the engraving to the side, two aspects caught Segall's attention: the harbor quays with their floating population of sailors and prostitutes, and the imposing landscape of the Botanical Garden, with rows of imperial palms.

A first-class passenger, Segall always felt a sense of pathos for the dispossessed. This can be seen both in Germany after World War I and in Brazil, in the Mangue series, for example, which joins together marginalization and prostitution.

The "Navio de Emigrantes" canvas is, in this sense, a grand allegory of emigration, much more than just a maritime landscape. The fate of Segall, who traveled across enormous geographic, cultural, and emotional distances to become a Brazilian artist, crosses paths with that of all the emigrants honored in this canvas, a passionate testimony of 20th century history.

Segall scholars, beginning with Mário de Andrade and Jorge Coli, frequently point out that there are two planes in the "Navio de Emigrantes:" the architecture of the whole, with its straight lines, angles, and visual reference points, such as the large vent tubes and the individualization of an infinite number of human figures huddled in the bow of the ship.

Lasar Segall (Vilnius, Lithuania, 1889–Sao Paulo, SP, 1957), painter, engraver, sculptor, and designer of Jewish origin. He starts his art studies in 1905 at the Drawing Academy of Master Antokolski in Vilnius, Lithuania. He moves to Germany in 1906 and studies at the School of Applied Arts and the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. In 1910, he goes to Dresden, where he attends the Academy of Fine Arts. In this initial period in the city, he becomes more familiar with impressionist painting, and holds his first individual exhibition in the Gurlitt Gallery in 1910. At the end of 1912, he comes to Brazil and, the following year, exhibits in São Paulo and Campinas. He returns to Europe in 1913 and, from 1917, becomes involved with the new expressionist generation in Dresden. In 1919, he founds the Dresdner Secession Group 1919 with Otto Dix (1891–1969), Conrad Felixmüller (1897–1977), Otto Lange (1897–1944), and others. This group brings together the city's expressionist artists. In 1921, he publishes Bubu, an album of lithographs, in 1922, and Memories of Vilnius in 1917, with etchings. He returns to Brazil, where he settles in São Paulo, at the end of 1923. In the São Paulo state capital, Lasar Segall becomes one of the protagonists of the modern art scene, considered a representative of the European avant-gardes. In 1924, he made the decorations for the futuristic ball of the Automobile Club and for the modernist Pavilion of Olívia Guedes Penteado (1872–1934). He is one of the founders of the Pro Modern Art Society (SPAM), in 1932, of which he becomes director until 1935. Ten years after his death, in 1967, the house where he lived in Vila Mariana, in São Paulo, is transformed into the Lasar Segall Museum.