Art: From Brazil

Lasar Segall paints violence from memory. A Jew, he spent his youth inTsarist Russia. In 1912 he won minor fame by being the first Cubist toexhibit in Brazil. In 1923 he went there to live. As a Brazilian,brown-haired Lasar Segall has painted jungles, plantations andcoffee-handling with a realism that does his naturalization paperscredit. Last week, at 49, Artist Segall made his U. S. debut atManhattan’s Neumann-Willard Gallery with a show of oils, water colorsand etchings. Critics were impressed.

For all its variance, Artist Segall’s work, like himself, is meticulous,disciplined, treats trouble tranquilly. His paintings have volume, seembig even when they are small. Using low-keyed earth colors—burntsienna, ochre, silver grey, black, dull red, dark green—and firm,concise lines, he strikes a sober balance between emotion andrestraint. Savage as an air raid but far stiller is his Pogrom, ahuddled heap of corpses lying quietly on a Torah scroll.

As an immigrant, Artist Segall etched with telling strokes the crowdedsteerage of his transatlantic liner, the lonely sea beyond. Brighter,more cheerful are his water colors of laborers taking siestas, cowslooking over a fence. With his attractive Brazilian wife and two sons,Artist Segall lives in big, bustling Sao Paulo.But he often goes back country to paint.Most appealing canvas in the show came from one such trip: Negro Mother,an almond-eyed, woolly-haired girl holding up her café-au-lait infant.