Mohali, Yolanda

Born in 1909 in the city of Kolozsvár of Austria-Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania; her parents were musicians.

She studied at a school in Nagybánya , now Baia Mare in Romania. Then she attended the Royal Academy of Budapest from 1927 to 1929. Throughout her life, Yolanda was fond of singing, studied Belcanto and was a lover of classical music. In 1931, she moved to Brazil to marry the Hungarian chemist Gabriel Mohalyi , who worked there. ^[2]

Already an experienced artist, she settled in São Paulo , where she taught drawing and painting. Among her students were , , and . Yolanda's early works were often vivid watercolors with a sense of light and transparency, demonstrating the effects of expressionism . Many of her 1930s works focus on the human figure, showing social injustice and deprivation. In 1935, Mohali began visiting Lazar Segal’s salon, which made a deep impression on her and had a strong influence on her work, which became darker and darker - the color palette of Yolanda Mohali became similar to the Segal palette, which was noted by critics such as Mari Pedrosa and . Around 1937, the artist joined the “Grupo dos Sete” together with Victor Brecheret , Elisabeth Nobiling ^[3] , , , and Regina Gomide Graz ( Regina Gomide Graz ) ^[4] .

With the outbreak of World War II, Gabriel Mohali lost her job and, together with her husband, they briefly moved to Rio Grande do Sul . Here she was engaged in pedagogical work and among her students there were several German-Jewish refugees. Some of the artist's works of the 1940s reflected the situation of refugees during the war. In 1945, Yolanda Mohali's first solo exhibition was held at the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil , which was positively evaluated by art historian Luís Martins . ^[5] In 1951, Mohali did her first woodcut work, studying with ^[6] in El Salvador . Since the 1950s, the work of Mohali has gradually become more abstract, showing some influences of Cubism ; Her works began to attract more and more attention of foreign collectors. In the 1950s and 1960s, she created stained glass for the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado , as well as frescoes for the chapel Capela do Cristo Operário (together with and other artists) and in the church of São Domingo . She later designed a stained glass window for the Capela de São Francisco in Itatiaia .

In 1957, Yolanda Mohali first returned to Europe, as she left there in 1931. In Arezzo , Italy , she was deeply impressed by the paintings of Piero della Francesca , masters of the Renaissance of the 15th century . In her own opinion, his work forced her to abandon figurative painting and turn to pure abstraction. Returning to Brazil, Yolanda visited Lazarus Segal, whose art had influenced her so much in her day. He asked her not to become an abstractionist, but after the death of Segal in 1957, Mohali abandoned figurative art and finally accepted abstraction. In 1958, Yolanda Mohali received the Brazilian Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea Prize, established by , director of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo and founder of the Galeria de Arte das Folhas gallery ^[7] . In 1959, she participated in the exhibition Primeira Exposição Coletiva de Artistas Brasileiros na Europa . ^{[8] [9]}

Between 1960 and 1962, Mohali taught design and plastic courses at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado . In 1962, she represented Brazil at the first Americana de Arte Biennale in Cordoba , Argentina , at which Sir Herbert Reed chose her work for display at an exhibition in the United States. Yolanda Mohali participated in many national and international exhibitions and in almost all the Biennale of Art in São Paulo from 1951 to 1967. In 1963, she was awarded the prize for the best national painting of Brazil at the 7th Biennale in Sao Paulo. In 1965, her work was presented at a solo exhibition at the 8th Biennale in Sao Paulo. Throughout his life, Mohali was widely exhibited, having held solo exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the United States, as well as in Latin America. Her first major retrospective show took place in 1976 at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo.

She died on August 23, 1978 in Sao Paulo.

Yolanda Mohali had no children, so her friends, Jürgen and Barbara Bartzsch, were the executors of her will. They cataloged her work and donated 50 paintings to the Museum of Modern Art of the University of São Paulo ^[10] . The works were chosen by the director of the museum, .

In 1979, a memorial exhibition of her works was shown at the 15th Biennale in Sao Paulo. Her works were also shown at posthumous solo exhibitions in 1982 and 1984 at Dan Galeria ^[11] in São Paulo. In 2008, an exhibition at in Curitiba was dedicated to the lyrical abstraction of Mohali. In 2009, a retrospective exhibition at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo Pinakothek presented the works of Yolanda Mohali from 1930 to 1970.

In 2014, a retrospective of Mohali's works at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo included more than 400 of her works. In 2015, about 50 of her works were exhibited at the retrospective exhibition Yolanda Mohalyi: A Grande Viagem in Dan Galeria . The exhibition coincided with the publication of Yolanda Mohalyi: a grande viagem by Maria Alice Milliet and Margarida Sant'Anna , the most extensive biography of Yolanda Mohali to date.

The works of the Brazilian artist are included in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Art Museum of America (formerly the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America), the Museum of Modern Art of the University of São Paulo , Casa Roberto Marinho ^[12] in Rio de Janeiro, and the collection of Cleusa Garfinkel ( Cleusa Garfinkel ) ^[13] .

• Yolanda mohalyi
• "Yolanda figurativa e abstrata" (port)
• 7ª Bienal de São Paulo - TODAS AS FOTOS (Port)