Almost 50 years after her death, in 1977, a woman who was a live-in housekeeper and cook and an artist in her spare time is now receiving scholarly study and international attention. Born in 1919 in rural Bahia, Brazil, Madalena Santos Reinbolt lived there until her 20s, when she moved to the city to seek domestic work. In 1949, she settled in Petrópolis, where she was hired to cook for the architect Lota de Macedo Soares, partner of the poet Elizabeth Bishop. The job only lasted three years because Reinbolt spent too much time making art, according to Bishop, who said they needed household help more than “a masterpiece every afternoon.” But it was Soares who got Reinbolt started with painting, and from there, using yarn and burlap, she began creating tapestries of riotous color and unique spatial imagination. This exhibition of 42 textile works and oil paintings is not to be missed. —Laura Jacobs