Tarsila, the mother of Brazilian Modern Art In her native country, all you need to say is her first name - Tarsila - for people to recognize the woman known as "the Picasso of Brazil." But Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) is little-known in North America, despite her revolutionary art. Faith Salie visits an exhibition (now showing at New York City's Museum of Modern Art) of Tarsila's "cannibalist" paintings, which took the tropes of Western European art and turned them into something extremely Brazilian.