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The Art and the Event PPP Americas

The Brazilian modern art collection from the Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces of the State of São Paulo includes artists who were crucial to Modernism in Brazil and iconic works of this artistic movement throughout its trajectory. Based on a selection of these works, this exhibition was prepared for the most important discussion forum on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in Latin America and the Caribbean which is held in São Paulo, Brazil, at Bandeirantes Palace, from 8 to 10 December 2021, with a digital platform in order to expand its access.

The event is organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and each edition takes place in a different country. This edition in Brazil has the institutional support from the European Union and the Federal Government; the academic support from the MBA PPP and Concessions from the Foundation School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo – FESPSP in coordination with the Undersecretariat of Partnerships of the São Paulo State Government.

The 2021 edition of PPP Americas features panels, plenary debates and projects presentation, in addition to the publication of discussion papers on topics of great relevance to PPP in Latin America and the Caribbean. The exhibition “Tradition & Innovation - Modernists in Brazil” joins the event in order to reflect on the consolidation of ideas of modernity and progress in the artistic and cultural scene of São Paulo.

The Exhibition and the Cultural Debate of Modernism in Brazil

At the end of the 19th century in São Paulo, the atmosphere of academicism paradoxically resisted and accepted modernists in the plastic arts, literature, architecture and music, due to the fact that São Paulo – an emerging metropolis with a large population of immigrants – yearned to increasingly move away from its past colonial habits, whereas, unlike Rio de Janeiro, did not have an official school of fine arts. The State Artistic Boarding School was the only institution that received official fostering to the arts in the city. It used to send scholarship students to Europe by which important artists were benefited, including the modernists Anita Malfatti and Victor Brecheret.

At the turn of the century, more than half of the population of São Paulo was made up of foreign immigrants. The strong influence of immigrant artists and the movement of Brazilian artists in Europe, besides stimulating the search for national roots, feature the singularities of art that emerges in São Paulo in the early years of the 20th century. The influence of the Academies’ art begins to give way to the production of artists in touch with European international avant-gardes such as Impressionism and Cubism. Artists such as Tarsila do Amaral join new forms of artistic expression trying to establish new symbols of brazilianness in the history of Brazil, integrated into the international artistic environment.

In 1922, as part of Brazil's Independence Centenary celebrations, the Modern Art Week brought together literature, music and visual arts at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo, with a spirit of innovation opposed to the conservative trends prevailing in Brazil at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

The concern with national art and with portraying identity elements of Brazilian culture and the modernization of cities intensified in the following decades. The painting “Workers” by Tarsila do Amaral is from 1933 and it represents the ethnic diversity and the advance of the industry that turned São Paulo into a metropolis. National themes remained present in the revaluation of colonial furniture by the modernists and of typically Brazilian objects, such as in the still life of the artist Vicente do Rego Monteiro, and the popular festivals represented in the exhibition by Djanira Motta e Silva’s work.

Even among the modernists, there were many differences and the diversity of languages gave rise to the confrontation between figurativism and abstractionism in the 1950s, when the most abstract trends in modern art arrive in Brazil through the first Bienals. The 1959 series of panels from the Governmental Palaces collection reveals the dualism of expression and artistic language. Although with the same dates and measurements, as they were commissioned by a telephone company before being bought by the State Government, these works feature different manifestations: Clóvis Graciano, Aldemir Martins and Marcelo Grassmann reproduce human figures and animals, although in geometric and cubist shapes; Manabu Mabe, Tomie Ohtake, Mário Zanini, Danilo Di Prete and Alfredo Volpi exhibit their concrete, geometric and informal abstraction experiments. Therefore, the eight panels are the representation of the aesthetic achievement synthesis of the artists of that time, once they reveal the different “Modernisms” which, despite their differences, express the ideas of innovation, change of values and search for identity.

Ana Cristina Carvalho Faggin
Curator of the Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces of the State of São Paulo