This is an article about the Escola de Desenho Industrial at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). Though still in its infancy, the field of industrial design in Brazil in the 1950s offered an excellent opportunity to those who wanted to fuse the aesthetics of the “pure arts” with the so-called “applied arts.” The goal of the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporánea), the contemporary art institute created by the MASP, was not to train artists but to turn out technicians who were skilled in the fields of ceramics, furniture building, and the graphic arts, for example, as long as these trades were compatible with the objectives of Brazilian industry. The IAC’s fundamental mission was to train the younger generation of workers to help adapt industry to modern ideas and contemporary tastes. The article lists the members of the institute.      

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo’s Instituto de Arte Contemporánea (IAC) was unquestionably one of the first attempts to take a systematic approach to industrial design in Brazil. It opened in 1951 and shut down just two years later (1953), possibly because the market for that kind of work was not yet sufficiently developed. This article was jointly written by the architect Achilina Bo Bardi (1914–92) and the curator Pietro Maria Bardi (1900–99), who was also Italian, and who was the founder and director of the museum, the MASP. These two were the major promoters of the socio-cultural potential of design and architecture in Brazil.

Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi planned, organized, and staffed the IAC. This article, which is archived in the MASP’s Document Center, is important because it explicitly expresses the IAC’s intention to become an industrial design school. The article explains that both Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi wanted to introduce an organic concept of art by integrating the aesthetic ideas of “pure art” into everyday life through the so-called “applied arts.” Their intention is clearly expressed in “Finalidades do I.A.C., no Museu de Arte: Pretende colocar os modernos métodos de produção a serviço da arte contemporánea” [digital archive ICAA (doc. no. 1087137)]. 

For a broader view of the industrial arts in Brazil, see “Instituto de Arte Contemporánea” by Jacob Ruchti, published in Habitat. Ensino, no. 3 (São Paulo, 1951) p. 62-65; by Lina Bo Bardi, “Vitrinas” (doc. no. 1086940); and by Leopold Haar, “Plásticas novas” (doc. no. 1086915).