A pioneer of modern art in Brazil, whose expressionist paintings were exhibited in São Paulo in 1917, where they were met with incomprehension on the part of critics.

Anita Malfatti spent her childhood in São Paulo, the daughter of an Italian father and a US-American mother. She completed her arts training between 1910 and 1914 in Berlin. While in Germany, she studied the expressionist oeuvre of the avant-garde artists with great enthusiasm and familiarised herself with Futurist and Cubist art. Following a sojourn in Brazil, she travelled to New York, where the art scene of the day was dominated by a conservative, naturalistic painting style. While there, Malfatti produced a series of landscape paintings. When she returned to São Paulo, she showcased her works in 1917 in a solo exhibition that sparked considerable controversy. Her painting style in particular was met with great disapproval from conservative art critics. Proponents of the avant-garde, on the other hand, were quick to hail her as a pioneer of Brazilian modernism. Malfatti was one of the champions of the Semana de Arte Moderna. In 1923, she was able to travel to Paris thanks to a travel scholarship. She returned to São Paulo in 1928, where she created her late work, which was stylistically inspired by the early masters of Italian painting – an artistic choice that was met with incredulity on the part of her contemporaries in the art world.