Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article, art critic Jacob Klintowitz discusses the international boycott of the São Paulo Biennial in the late sixties. He suggests that the Associação Brasileira dos Críticos de Arte and the AIAP—the two Brazilian institutions that [...]

The controversial author Décio Pignatari visited the IX International Biennial of São Paulo in 1967, which inspired him to write a brief overview on the subject of “anti-art.” In one of his brazen statements he claims that “the Biennale is [...]

This text was the introduction to the Iª Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, written by the art director for the exhibition, Lourival Gomes Machado. The text explains the form in which this exhibition was proposed by the organizers, who [...]

Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the segment “Arte Contemporânea Brasileira” in the 24th International Biennial of São Paulo (1998), states that the name of the exhibition he is curating raises the following question: “What art is (not) [...]

This commentary by Mário Pedrosa centers on the large audiences that admired and interacted with the works exhibited at the IX São Paulo Biennial (1969). He states that: “art has ceased to be that distant and humorless thing, that terribly [...]

Fernando Lemos disagrees with most of the critics of the day when he asserts that the growth of the São Paulo Biennial—and of its Brazilian section in particular—should not be curtailed. Due to the large number of participants, “the Brazilian [...]

In this brief article, critic José Geraldo Vieira analyzes how Brazilian art has been influenced by constant contact with foreign tendencies at the São Paulo Biennial. In his view, everything shown “wholesale” at the biennial—especially in [...]

Geraldo Ferraz comments on the fact that art critics were impatient to know whether or not the seventh Bienal de São Paulo (1963) had brought figurative art “back.” According to the critic Jacô Klintowitz, the question of whether their art will [...]

The synopsis in English are coming soon [...]

In this essay, the chief curator of the twenty-first Bienal de São Paulo, João Cândido Galvão, explains the very ambiguous criteria he used for the selection of works: “man.” In his opinion, art does not exist without “man” at its center [...]

Curator Agnaldo Farias makes use of the image suggested in the story “A terceira margem do rio,” by João Guimarães Rosa. He applies this image to a discussion of the issues that affected the selection of works to represent Brazil in the [...]

The journal Habitat conducted a survey on the importance of the São Paulo Biennial. The critic Sérgio Milliet states that, as a show of good faith, no one should question the international scope of this São Paulo event. Moreover, in his opinion, [...]

Jacob Klintowitz, the author of this text, mocks the boycott of the São Paulo Biennial since many of the countries participating in it have committed countless “international sins” in his view. He states that he does not support any form of [...]

Undermining the guidelines of the exhibition Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte (XXIII São Paulo Biennial, 1996), Puerto Rican curator Mari Carmen Ramírez explains the contrarian concept of the “re-materialização” of art which, in her [...]

This newspaper article remarks on the performance of art critic Mário Pedrosa from the time he was named the director of the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) and of the VI São Paulo Biennial. Pedrosa had returned from a long trip to Europe and the [...]

Curator Nelson Aguilar asserts that the 22nd São Paulo Biennial (1994) would place emphasis on the question of the support. Since the fifties, he claims, Brazilian artists “increasingly showed reluctance to limit themselves to […] that [...]

In this text, Nelson Aguilar, chief curator of the XXIII São Paulo Biennial (1996), justifies his choice of the theme Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte for the event. He argues that the perseverance of art at the end of the second [...]