A Bienal de São Paulo: forma histórica e produção cultural

Abstract

The São Paulo Bienal is the most important visual arts event in Brazil. Visited by a huge amount of people and carried out with heavy sponsored investments, most of which are private, the Biennial in São Paulo reaches the end of the 20th Century as one of the most important events in the world's art agenda. Created in 1951 by the business man and industry owner Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, the exhibition in São Paulo was inspired by the Biennial in Venice and nowadays it is part of a series of regular international exhibitions around the world, such as Kassel, Lyon, Sydney and Havana, among others. To begin with, if we want to understand the context of the creation of the Biennial in São Paulo, we have to take a look at the changes in the model of economic development adopted in Latin America after the 2nd World War, when events like that start being held everywhere in the continent. The years after war revealed a new cultural scenario and the Biennial in São Paulo is just one of many cultural events in a moment when patronage was changing and art reviewers were becoming professionals. The Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo (MAM) was in charge of the creation of the Biennials in the city and reflected the increasingly close economic and political rapport between Brazil and the United States. A crucial point related to the foundation~ of MAM and the Bienal was the polemic discussion concerning abstract art. After a decade as part of the museum activities, the Bienal became a foundation. Besides the institutional aspects, the São Bienal can be analyzed in the way and form it its presented at the end of the nineties. In that sense, the Universal Exhibitions that came out in the 19th Century are a starting point to understand the structure of the 24th São Paulo Bienal, in 1998, beginning with the segments that divided the exhibition. The present format of the event is due to the performance of important agents such as the professionals who put it together, art directors and curators who influenced the form of the Bienal until it got to the structure we know today. Since it is a mass event, the space utilization with several activities and services aimed at the public reveals somehow the way the final form of this event is the result of a negotiation in which the public, to some extent, also demands according to their will and necessity