Beyond order and reason: the swiss delegation to the First Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo

Abstract

This article reviews the Swiss attendance at the First Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo through the analysis of critical texts published at the time and the correspondence among the exhibition’s organizers, the artist Max Bill and Swiss authorities, deposited in the Wanda Svevo Archive of the Biennial Foundation, in São Paulo, and in the Switzerland Federal Archive, in Bern. The identification of most of the artworks included at the Swiss delegation at the First São Paulo Bienal reveals that the country presented a varied panorama of modern art developed in its territory and that the examples of concrete art did not constitute a conceptual unit. Research shows that there was not a consensus among the Swiss delegation about the conception of concrete art and that the ideas of Max Bill about this subject, far from being unanimously shared among his peers, were not limited to a defense of rigid mathematical methods.