This document consists of the minutes to the special general meeting of the board of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), where motions to dissolve the museum and to donate its holdings to the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) are approved. The minutes show that the president of the board and the director of the museum had received express orders from both the Ministério das Relações Exteriores do Brasil (Itamaraty) and the Governo do Estado de São Paulo to institute the Fundação Bienal to run the São Paulo Biennial. Critic Mario Schemberg, eminent journalist Claudio Abramo, and artist Livio Abramo led the opposition to the transfer of the holdings to the USP. Because he did not want to oppose critic Mario Pedrosa, Abramo proposed that the donation to the university not be partial. A letter sent by painter Tarsila do Amaral in open support of Pedrosa’s position was read at the meeting.

From the late forties through the early fifties, Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (1898–1977)—better known as “Ciccillo” Matarazzo—played a critical role in the creation of a series of art institutions in the city of São Paulo. The institutions the São Paulo-based industrialist and businessman of Italian descent supported included the Cinemateca Brasileira, the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC) and the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP).  He served as the president of MAM-SP until 1962, when he left to create the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo—.

Politician, art critic, journalist, and professor Mário Pedrosa (1900–1981) is indisputably one of the most influential scholars of Brazilian art history. From 1961 to 1963, he directed the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP).  He was also a founding member of the Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte [Brazilian chapter of the International Association of Art Critics] (AICA) and a major figure in the São Paulo Biennial from 1951 to 1963, when the event was taking shape during its first two decades.

Physicist and art critic Mario Schemberg (1914–1990) was a professor at the Instituto de Física de la Universidade de São Paulo. He wrote fundamental texts on the work of outstanding Brazilian artists such as Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988), Lygia Clark (1920–88), and Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).

Journalist Claudio Abramo (1923–1987) first worked at the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo and, later, served on the editorial board of São Paulo’s other major daily, Folha de São Paulo. Under the influence of Oswaldo Goeldi (1895–1961), Claudio’s brother, Lívio Abramo (1903–1992), became a printmaker and illustrator. His later work bears the influence of Tarsila do Amaral. After a long stay in France, the artist won second prize in printmaking at the II São Paulo Biennial held in 1953.

Tarsila do Amaral (1886–1973) is one of the most important figures in Modern art from Brazil. She formed part of the Grupos dos Cinco, which organized the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna (see ICAA digital archive doc. no. 781808). Her work bears the influence, albeit tenuously, of her studies with French masters Fernand Léger and André Lhote. She and her husband at the time, poet Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954), reformulated Brazilian painting on the basis of the paintings from her Pau-Brasil period exemplified by the painting Abaporu (1928). On the Pau-Brasil movement, see doc. no. 780937.