Formation of a Catalogue Raisonné. Text by Christina Scarabôtolo Gabaglia Penna, Technical Director and Researcher of the Portinari Project (1979-2016), published in Catalogue Raisonné, 2004.
When the project to publish a Catalogue Raisonné became a reality, I immediately felt a certain responsibility to document the countless steps that brought us to this point. As the only original team member, together with João Candido, still with the Portinari Project, I witnessed the Project’s history from its genesis. As such, I felt it was important to share with our readers and scholars a bit of the “making of” our publication, of how we brought to life this extensive collection of data.
As I reflected on how best to present this experience, I found myself recalling a book that had made quite an impression on me, “L’emozione e la regola,” edited by Domenico De Masi. I was fascinated by its stories about 13 creative groups, 12 European and one American, from the most diverse fields: the Thonet furniture factory, the Bloomsbury literary group, the Bauhaus and the Los Alamos group that produced the first atomic bomb.
All these groups were highly successful and had unique organizational styles, creative and practical. They each took independent, if not alternative, paths with original approaches to organizing and developing their collective undertakings. They were comprised of extremely motivated individuals powered by a spirit of initiative, mutual trust, determination, dedication, flexibility and harmonious relationships among members, despite personality differences.
After reading the book, I concluded that our team at the Portinari Project could well be called a “creative group.” Ever since, I’ve been convinced that our story should be told that it may serve as inspiration for other groups. The time is now at hand.
It all began when the Rui Barbosa Foundation offered the Portinari Project a room, its windows opening onto a beautiful, century-old garden. We were there for almost a year before moving to our current location in the Solar Grandjean de Montigny building on the campus of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro /PUC-Rio.
Our first meeting took place on April 2, 1979. João Candido Portinari led the team of researchers: Adriana Bianco, Kátia Nunes Machado Braune and myself, Christina Penna, coordinated by Leonel Kaz, who had helped João Candido formulate the original research project. Our first objective was to locate and catalog Candido Portinari’s complete body of work, together with all documents related to his work and life, with the ultimate goal of producing a Catalogue Raisonné of the painter’s work. This was the monumental challenge set before us that morning of April 2.
Of all the different types of publications, a Catalogue Raisonné is the most comprehensive and definitive resource on an artist’s work. In the words of art historian Francis O’Connor, a major contributor to the Catalogue Raisonné of Jackson Pollock’s works:
“ ...Initially imposing order on the disperse remains of an artist’s lifework. Once this analytic task is completed, an interpretive synthesis can then be undertaken in light of the work as a whole. This catalogue is therefore a tool – but it is also hoped that young artists may find in its arrangement of the creations of a great painter, a map initiating them into their artistic future.”
When the Portinari Project began, the number of works by Portinari was estimated at around five thousand. Today we know that estimate was correct, having located 4,879 works thus far.
Our principal source of information was the artist’s widow, Dona Maria Portinari: throughout the years she organized, informally but with great competence, files of correspondence and clippings from newspapers and magazines in addition to collecting exhibition catalogs, books, photographs, films and work-related memorabilia such as paintbrushes, tubes of paint, palettes, compasses, etc., altogether around 15,000 items. To these we added other resources essential to our locating and cataloging the artist’s works:
> The documentation for an initial cataloging of the artist’s work by Flávio Motta, professor of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of São Paulo. In a most generous gesture, the researcher granted us all he had collected, including brief reports documenting meetings with people from Portinari’s most intimate circle. Among these were Olga Portinari Leão, the artist’s sister, as well as Rosinha Leão and Enrico Bianco, both Portinari’s dear friends, collaborators and assistants in the execution of the great panels and murals, like those for the United Nations or for the Ministry of Education and Health. The researcher’s documentation also included lists of collectors with addresses and telephone numbers, which greatly facilitated in locating them, even those in the United States and Europe.
> The documentation from a first endeavor to organize the remaining works from the artist’s atelier. Dona Maria undertook this task in 1978 with the collaboration of Adriana Bianco, an Argentine museologist then living in Rio de Janeiro. This compilation contained a file for each work with its technical information and a black and white photo.
> An invaluable collection of photograph negatives consisting of 600 glass plates taken by Kazys Vosylius, a Finnish photographer who worked for the Institute for National Artistic and Historical Heritage (IPHAN) during the 1930s and 1940s and who photographed a large number of Portinari’s works while they were still in the artist’s atelier. Many of the works not located by the Portinari Project are visually documented in this archive.
> The early work of Ralph Camargo, elaborated for the 1977 exhibition and catalogue “Portinari Desenhista” at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, which was supported by Fernando Caiubi Ariani with the backing of Edson Motta, the Museum’s director, and P. M. Bardi, director of the Assis Chateaubriand Museum of Art of São Paulo. Camargo interviewed Portinari’s contemporaries and published their statements in the exhibition catalogue; this became an important primary source of information on Portinari’s work, life and era.
In our early meetings, as each team member shared his or her professional background, it became clear that no one had prior experience in the type of research we were about to undertake. João Candido was proposing something new: research dedicated to the preservation of mobile patrimony; preservation not only of the physical integrity of the work itself, but preservation in the broader sense of organizing it into an instrument of knowledge that could later be dissseminated through a variety of channels. At the time, we thought about books and exhibitions, but in addition to those conventional formats, we now have exhibitions of replicas, art education programs, virtual museums and the Internet.
We cannot stress enough how vital João Candido’s scientific approach was in leading us, from the outset, to a clear definition of his adventurous proposal.
During this period, the Project had the priceless collaboration of editor and graphic designer Salvador Monteiro, who designed the logo and stationery we have been using ever since. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) also contributed enormously: Fernanda de Camargo- Moro and Lourdes Novaes assisted us in defining museological procedures and standards for cataloging Portinari’s works.
Examining and Cataloging Works
In our early meetings, we began defining the first phase of the Portinari Project, Examining and Cataloging Works. From the beginning we determined that:
> Every work should be examined by a researcher. We were convinced that this was the only way to obtain reliable, consistent information about each work. We would begin in Rio de Janeiro and then proceed to works located in other states or outside Brazil.
> A visual record of the highest possible quality should be made of every work in order to build a collection of images for use in publications, reproductions, etc. Working with two of the most experienced photographers of their time, Nicolau Drei and Claus Meyer, both from the Câmara Três company, we defined the standards, formats, types of film and criteria that would best produce a homogenous collection of images. We decided to include the work’s frame in the image and to use a standard scale of grays and colors. This would serve as the basis for future corrections by making it possible to detect alterations in the original colors.
> The existing documental material, roughly 15,000 items, would also be cataloged to complement the documentation of the works. For some months, librarian Siri Chateaubriand assisted the Project in establishing parameters for the collection. Soon afterward, another librarian, Georgina Staneck, joined the team. The material was categorized and cataloged according to norms established by the Brazilian Association of Technical Norms (ABNT).
The team thus formed, we determined that to examine and catalog the works, we had to define our methodologies. We developed data sheets for registering the works, and as there are no rigid cataloging standards in the field of museology, we based our parameters on the experience of our team members, the cataloging methods of Brazilian and foreign museums and on a select bibliography.
Researchers would fill out a data sheet as they examined a work and return it to the Portinari Project for review, double-checking and completion. Those data sheets were the source of our numbered work files [FCO], which contain five categories of information:
> Technical information: This includes everything that can be ascertained about the work by looking at it: title; technique/support; dimensions; date and signature; and the presence of inscriptions, labels or stamps.
> Information regarding ownership: One of the most important things in an artist’s catalog is the complete ownership history of each work; this is essential for determining a work’s authenticity. The information is obtained from the owner, who often does not know the work’s history, and from other sources, such as correspondence, periodicals and photographs.
> Documental information: Each file details all documental materials, including correspondence, periodicals, reproductions in photographs, films, and the like.
> Written description: This item is not usually included in museum files, but we reasoned that extreme events do occur and that it is possible to lose every visual record of a work; in such an event, a written description would be the only way to recover information on the work. This information has proven to be a remarkably useful aspect of our database, allowing us to retrieve any work using its descriptive details.
> Information on the photographic record: This item contains data on the professional who photographed the work, the date it was photographed and the format used.
We began our research in May 1979, visiting the atelier of the artist and the collections of two people who were very close to the Portinari family. We tested our data sheet and evaluated our choices of items to be included. Talking to the collectors, we probed for information about other collectors and remained attentive to details that might clarify unresolved questions. Besides the collection at the artist’s atelier, then under the care and custody of Dona Maria, we examined the collections of Dr. Mem Xavier da Silveira, physician and close friend of the artist, and that of Olga Portinari Leão, the artist’s sister. After some necessary adjustments to our data sheets, they were approved, and we set out to visit public and private collections in Rio de Janeiro.
In this initial phase, we also tested our method for visually documenting the works. First, we determined that the researcher should visit the collection before the photographer. The latter would then be able to choose the most appropriate equipment and material before going himself. Little by little, we refined these procedures, but not without facing some real challenges: some works were framed, and the glass reflected light; other could not be removed, either due to size or because they had been executed directly on a wall. Here we must acknowledge the critical support of Kodak, which for over five years provided the Portinari Project with all the materials used for the photographs, including film, developers and paper. Suffice it to say that we know of no other collection that has achieved such photographic homogeneity, making the Portinari Project a pioneering institution.
After examining the first collections, we set out to visit collections suggested by Dona Maria Portinari and by Flávio Motta, as well as those suggested by collectors we had visited. In 1980, the team grew with the arrival of museologists Vera Alencar, Lúcia Meira Lima and Maria Lúcia Faria Rodrigues, also dedicated to examining and cataloging the works. Throughout 1979 and 1980, we examined and cataloged the works located in Rio de Janeiro. In 1981, it was time to see works in other states, notably São Paulo, which had the second largest concentration of the artist’s works.
To facilitate our task, we received decisive and unprecedented support: Globo Organizations, through Globo TV and the Roberto Marinho Foundation, began a campaign on national television inviting anyone with information or relevant documents about Portinari’s works to contact the Portinari Project. The postal service joined the effort and granted the Project a post office box, and in six months we received over 3,000 letters from throughout Brazil. Many letters requested financial help or funds for a child who wanted to study painting. Others were simply letters from people who wished to encourage us.
Many of those who contacted us provided important information. With many new leads resulting from this campaign, we began our visits in São Paulo, with museologist Maria Pierina Camargo representing us in that state. Then, in 1981, we moved on to other states, visiting at least ten others that year.
When the time came to photograph works outside of Rio de Janeiro, we maintained our decision to send the photographer only after the museologist had visited the work, thus minimizing our chances of error. The photographers from Câmara Três working for the Portinari Project at that time were Peter Schneider, Gusmão and Ciro Mariano. Later, we began requesting that owners provide slides and negatives of the works, always according to our criteria.
During this phase, we received vital additional support that was unprecedented in Brazil: VARIG airlines offered us a large discount on tickets and waived weight limits so that we might transport photography equipment. Through their ground crew, the company also helped immensely in locating works.
In 1982, with the works in Brazil cataloged, we felt the time had come to tackle works residing abroad. We could not have succeeded in that task without the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which called on Brazilian diplomats throughout the world to help locate Portinari’s works in the countries of their mission. The response was encouraging and led to the location of about one hundred works. We organized our travels by region: a trip to Europe and the Middle East to visit Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, England, Italy, Finland and Israel; one to the United States and Mexico; and another to the Latin American countries Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Venezuela. Brazilian diplomats opened doors for us during these excursions, accompanying us as we visited collectors and problem-solving as needed.
During this process, we rediscovered works such as “Country Dance” [FCO-2305]. Painted in the early 1920s, it was the artist’s first work with a Brazilian theme, one he had sought throughout his life to recover. With a collector from Rio de Janeiro, we located a small portrait inscribed by Portinari himself, “My First Trabalho” [FCO-1176]; here was the work the artist saw as his first real painting.
The press, collectors, museums, art galleries and art dealers disseminated news of our work, and soon it became widely known and respected. We began to influence attitudes among owners, dealers and galleries, demonstrating the importance of such an undertaking, both to heighten worldwide appreciation of the artwork and also to ensure its safekeeping.
We at the Portinari Project have always focused strictly on the cultural nature of our mission. We are dedicated solely to the study and documentation of the work, life and times of Candido Portinari, thus maintaining the professional integrity of our work.
Research Program
Parallel to our work locating and cataloging works and documents, in 1982 we began the Research Program guided by four central objectives:
> To conduct an Oral History Program based on interviews with the artist’s contemporaries: their stories would illuminate the life and work of Candido Portinari and the concerns of his generation. The program generated a wealth of new material about the artist’s work. The Center for Research and Documentation (CPDoc) of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation supported the program, in addition to lending its methodology. Historian Christina Guido and sociologist Rose Goldschmidt implemented the program, and were later joined by historian ngela Lessa.
> To integrate documental material with information on the actual works. This involved reading every piece of correspondence and every press clipping on file.
> To date the works we had located, over 30% of which were neither signed nor dated. This was essential if we were to order the works chronologically in our Catalogue Raisonné.
> To verify the authenticity of works: during the process of examining and registering, we had encountered works of questionable authorship. As we cataloged our extensive collection of documentation, we found references to works that we had not located - works mentioned in letters, in interviews or reproduced in magazines or newspapers, or perhaps documented on film or in photographs. Our mission was to secure as much information as possible about the greatest number of works, so we resolved to catalog such works and incorporate them into the Portinari oeuvre. Initially, over 400 works were identified but not located. We have been gradually locating them throughout the years, but 120 of them are still unaccounted for.
Such is the case with “Portrait of João Pessoa” [FCO-4922], which was probably lost in Paraíba during the Revolution of 1930. The only information we have about it comes from an interview with Lula Cardoso Ayres, Portinari’s friend and colleague at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, who took the portrait from Rio to Paraíba. Such is also the case with the portrait of poet Jayme Ovalle [FCO-4859]; according to poet Dante Milano, this work reflects Portinari’s first foray into modernism.
Other works in the artist’s archive have been destroyed: “Festival of Saint John” [FCO-4082], one of the three panels created for the New York World’s Fair in 1939, which was lost in a huge fire at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1958. Others were destroyed in a fire at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro in 1978. At the old Tupi Radio of Rio de Janeiro, six of the eight panels from the Musicians Series were destroyed by fire. At first, all the panels were thought to have been destroyed, but the Portinari Project was able to locate, in Portugal, the two that had been spared.
Other works were found modified, disassembled or removed from a larger work. In the case of the two canvases entitled “Abstract” [FCO-80 and FCO-81], the painter himself was responsible: research showed that Portinari had cut them out of a larger work called “Composition with Figure” [FCO-5190]. In another case, we found that a third party had disassembled the three-panel screen depicting “Saint Mark” [FCO-2988], “Jesus” [FCO-1444] and “Saint Francis” [FCO-2987], all of which were located, but in three different private collections.
We were also able to locate the small-scale color sketches for the costumes and sets of the ballet “Iara.” The renowned Original Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo performed the ballet to resounding acclaim in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and New York. The sketches had been lost since their creation in the 1940s and were located in Germany in 1996.
In the 25 years of the Portinari Project’s existence, our team has created and re-created itself, like any other creative group, with some members moving on to face other challenges and new blood moving in to meet the evolving demands of the research. Even so, the same core group has been caring for the works and documents since the 1980s: Elisanete Albernaz da Silva has been organizing photographic and audiovisual documents since 1982; Noélia Coutinho dos Santos joined us that same year and assumed responsibility for the cataloging and documentation of the works, and Angela Mega e Chagas has been managing documental archives since 1986.
Building the database
In the beginning, managing the growing compilation of countless files was done manually. Early in the 1980s, however, João Candido began incorporating our first computer resources. It was he who was responsible for our first database. Some time later, other PUC-Rio professors contributed as well: Daniel Menascé, Daniel Schwabe and Rosana Lanzelotte. Eventually, systems analyst Fábio Ruiz joined the team to implement the professors’ recommendations.
In 1996, our team was cemented with the arrival of Luiz Tucherman. He assumed responsibility for the conceptualization, transfer and consolidation of the various archives and smaller databases, building them into one comprehensive whole. This afforded researchers at the Portinari Project easy, unrestricted access to each work, its visual record and all related documents. The integration of all the correspondence, press clippings, books, photographs, audiovisual records, texts, interviews and data sheets helped make our archive a standard in the world of art and culture. André Arraes, Robson Mattos Guimarães, Daniel Benevides, Paula Ypiranga Guaranys and Carolina Matheus contributed greatly to this effort.
The database made feasible the Portinari Project website, which provides free access to this rich multimedia archive and is a launching pad for other projects, notably the Catalogue Raisonné.
Authenticating the works
The issue of authentication has troubled us since 1981. At first, we vowed to publish in the Catalogue Raisonné only works proven to be authentic, but upon encountering the first cases of false attributions, we were at a loss as to how to proceed. We suspected falsification when presented works of inferior quality or that had sparse, evasive documentation, but what should be done? What legal recourses were available? We discovered that Brazil had no organ, institution or legislation for handling such problems. We resolved, therefore, to assemble the people most familiar with the artist and his work and define a systematic way of authenticating the works.
The first meeting was held in 1984 at the home of art critic and historian Antonio Bento, Portinari’s colleague and lifelong friend and author of an important book on the artist’s work, “Portinari” (Leo Christiano Editorial, Rio de Janeiro, 1980 and 2003). Attending the meeting were Dona Maria Portinari, João Candido, Antonio Bento himself, art dealer Jean Boghici, painter and assistant to Portinari Enrico Bianco and myself. The consensus was to form a committee that would meet regularly to analyze every work that had been examined and photographed. In this capacity, Dona Maria Portinari, Enrico Bianco, Jean Boghici and I met twice a week at the Portinari Project headquarters, a routine that began in 1985 and continued for ten years. Today, we meet any time a new case requires it.
In those meetings, we analyzed slides of every work that had been examined. In some cases, we requested to see the original in order to more carefully evaluate the work. We separated them into three categories: authentic works: those of unquestionable authenticity; false works: those clearly not of Portinari’s authorship; and works under study: those with insufficient evidence to confirm authenticity.
Works about which the committee did not reach a consensus fell into the works under study category. Research continues in hopes that their owners or dealers will procure information that may illuminate each case. Out of all the works the Portinari Project has located thus far, 426 are considered to be false and 123 are cases under study.
The Project determined to issue statements of authenticity for authenticated works. To this end, Thomas De La Rue, a company specialized in high-security paper, designed a self-adhesive label that is filled out with the work’s technical information and signed by the committee members. It is then affixed to the reverse of an enlarged photograph of the work, with one copy remaining in the possession of the work´s owner and another copy being filed with the Portinari Project. To date, we have issued 770 such statements of authenticity.
This was also the period when João Candido authorized the Portinari Project to begin stamping the painter’s signature on works unsigned by the artist himself (around 30% were not signed). This universally accepted and adopted practice, which allows specialists to safeguard art works, is provided for in sub-items I through IV of article 25 of Author’s Rights Law No. 5,988 of December 14, 1973. In such cases, the statement of authenticity notes this interference.
The Portinari Project adopted the following criteria to guide the committee in analyzing works to verify their authenticity:
> To trace the work’s history from the original to the current owner; identify how it was located; confirm the existence of any documental proof of provenance, etc.
> To confirm the existence of documentation such as reproductions or references to the work in periodicals, books, photographs, films, catalogs, etc.
> To analyze paint pigments: often sufficient in and of itself to settle cases of suspected forgery, the technique identifies not only the type of pigment, but also the period in which the work was painted. It was recommended to us by renowned conservators and professors Edson Motta Junior, of the School of Fine Arts (Escola de Belas Artes) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Luiz Antonio de Souza, of the Perservation Center at the Federal University of Minas Gerais; and the late Gilson Cruz de Oliveira, of the Fluminense Federal University.
These professionals offered invaluable advice to the Portinari Project as we confronted some very decisive cases. Our team’s bold, determined spirit, widely recognized by the press, not only solidified us as a front for the protection of the painter’s work, but also inspired changes in the market itself. Art dealers increased their diligence in verifying the authenticity of cataloged works, which minimized their chances of handling false works and consequently reduced the number of such works in circulation.
It was at this point that criminal lawyer Dr. Luís Guilherme Martins Vieira began his collaboration as our legal consultant in such matters.
Publishing the Catalogue Raisonné
When at last the opportunity was at hand to offer the world the Catalogue Raisonné, the ultimate goal of the Portinari Project, our resourcefulness was once again called for. We now faced a new challenge, perhaps the greatest of all: to produce in only ten months the Catalogue Raisonné of the works of Candido Portinari, with five volumes of nearly 512 pages each, as well as a CD-ROM with retrieval capabilities.
We were soon faced with yet another challenge: to publish a printed edition of the Catalogue, accompanied by a CD-ROM, while keeping the database updated. It was essential that the database reflect any changes made to the printed version so that they would be included in the CD-ROM as well. This synchronization was of utmost importance. The database is, after all, the central resource for our collection and the foundation of other formats, such as the website and the CD-ROM. Other publications of this type are commonly based on text files.
In order to meet this challenge as well as our deadline, we determined that the database would be the definitive warehouse of all information to be included in the Catalogue. Using the database, we would generate text files with all the Catalogue entries, analyze and revise them and then transfer any changes back to the database. This way, we were able to simultaneously develop text files for the Catalogue and update our database.
To face this challenge, we invited Regina Ferraz, editor and graphic designer, to manage all phases of the editorial process, including: confirmation of chronological accuracy; standardization and revision of the entire database; translation to English and proofreading of all bilingual sections of the Catalogue; verification of consistency between the diverse fields of the database. After each of these steps was completed, the database was updated to reflect all changes, and a digital file was made of the Catalogue entries and their bibliographical references. When the editorial process was completed, the digital files were delivered to the graphic designer for layout and image placement.
Meanwhile, the Portinari Project continues gathering information at a dynamic pace. Every day we receive articles from periodicals, books and exhibition and auction catalogs, which are immediately incorporated into the database. In addition, the media’s attention to the publication of the Catalogue Raisonné has helped us locate many additional works, as well as visual records of works already cataloged.
Our method of juggling all the different aspects of this project has proven to be complex yet effective: we have successfully kept our database updated and used it to generate the entries of the Catalogue Raisonné.
Another major challenge has haunted the Portinari Project: how could we best preserve our photograph collection? Throughout the years, photographs, negatives and slides deteriorate, and the chances are slim of returning to owners to take new photographs.
Since the Catalogue Raisonné required digitalized images of our photograph collection, we included in the publication project the digitalization of the entire collection, this time using the highest resolution and chromatic fidelity possible. We analyzed and certified each of the images in this process, preparing them for the Catalogue while transforming the only existing visual records of Portinari’s complete works into a high-resolution digital archive. It goes without saying that this archive is paramount to the preservation of Brazilian cultural and artistic heritage, especially in light of the 25 years invested in compiling it.
Behind every creative group is a great administrative team. We are grateful for the efforts of those who have been part of our team at the Portinari Project. Each of the following individuals has contributed to our success in publishing our Catalogue Raisonné: Maria do Carmo Alves, Solange de Oliveira e Almeida, Rita Gaivão, Roseane Macedo, Daniela Murta, Maria de Fátima Nunes Pereira, Edmar Barbosa Amorim and Reinaldo Oliveira Santos.
To those persons whose names I have not mentioned, I apologize. The Portinari Project could never have achieved all of this if it weren’t for the invaluable help of the Brazilian people, who were called upon many times to contribute to our efforts.
I am proud to be a part of this creative group and hope that it may inspire and encourage others. To everyone in our group, thank you!
