Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil sets out to confront "the issues of race, class, and gender in Brazil . . . as well as larger matters of nationalism and internationalism, primitivism and colonial history and the relationship between high art and low, regional, folk or vernacular art" (23). Such an ambitious undertaking is tackled through works by Tarsila do Amaral, affectionately addressed by her first name (though I do not recall many male artists in the twentieth century being addressed by their first names) and described as the originator of Modern Art in Brazil.