At 14 years of age (in 1946), the Brazilian artist of Japanese descent, Jorge Mori (b. 1932), began to study painting in São Paulo under the instruction of the Japanese painter Yoshiya Takaoka. In the 1940s, he participated in several salons as well as individual exhibitions both in the São Paulo capital and in Rio de Janeiro, where his precociousness as well as his artistic qualities stirred up interest among art critics. This document shows the great interest taken by the critic and sociologist Sérgio Milliet in Mori’s painting, although he does raise questions about what content the young artist will paint in the future. At the time, without exception, Mori’s artwork all reflected the technique aligned with those trends prioritized by painters in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of those artists were still executing work influenced by the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists, rendering domestic scenes and still lifes. In the early 1950s, Mori joined the São Paulo-based Grupo Guanabara, in which Brazilian-born artists became acquainted with immigrant artists of Japanese and Italian origins. The artist subsequently moved to Paris, where he remained for 25 years; paradoxically, in Paris, Mori focused on learning Renaissance painting techniques.
[As supplementary reading on Japanese-Brazilian artists, see the following texts in the ICAA digital archive: “Grupo Seibi” (1110646); by Tomoo Handa “1ª Ata Grupo Seibi” (1110650) and “Depoimento” (1110643); by Ibiapaba Martins “Meia hora no ‘atelier’ do Jacaré” (1110647); by Alzira Pecorari et al. “Depoimentos sobre o Grupo Guanabara” (1110644); by Takaoka and Daisy Peccinini “Depoimento de Yoshyia Takaoka ao Centro de Pesquisa de Arte Brasileira Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado” (1110642); and by Maria Cecília França (org.) “Nipo Brasileiros: mestres e alunos em 50 anos,” (1110648)].
