Imaginary cartography and arts geopolitics: São Paulo Biennials in the 1950s, Paris and the artistic world peripheries

Abstract

By studying catalogs and documents of the 1950s São Paulo Biennials, I identify a French artistic domination over the “Western” world, that emerges through the way in which the history of art of the 20th century was narrated and understood. In these discourses, the city of Paris appeared as an internationally shared symbol, serving as index for the history of modernism.The fifth Biennial (1959) is a critical event, in which France refused to participate with 20th century artworks. The institutional absence was not reflected in the texts of the exhibition, Paris being highly cited in the presentations of several other countries, such as, for example, the USA. It was in this half-absence of Paris, nevertheless, that a young production, passionate about blemishes and obvious gestures, dominated the event making it difficult for several observers to distinguish the beginning and end of different national delegations, leading this event to be dubbed as “the Biennial of Tachisme”. This homogeneity enabled peripheral regions to present, for the first time, their own art as no longer in deficit to that of the great nations.