Tarsila do Amaral, (born September 1, 1886, Capivari, Brazil—died January 17, 1973, São Paulo), Brazilian painter who blended local Brazilian content with international avant-garde aesthetics. Amaral, who is usually simply called Tarsila, began studying academic painting in 1916. In 1920 she traveled to Paris, where she took classes at the Académie Julian, returning to Brazil just after São Paulo’s 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna (“Week of Modern Art”), a festival of modern art, literature, and music that announced Brazil’s break with academic art. In December 1922 Tarsila returned to Paris, where she studied with the Cubist André Lhote and briefly