This text was the introduction to the Iª Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, written by the art director for the exhibition, Lourival Gomes Machado. The text explains the form in which this exhibition was proposed by the organizers, who sought to follow the paradigm set by its precursor, the Biennale di Venezia. The MAM-SP had two basic objectives for this round of what was planned to be an exhibition held every two years: “to present modern art produced in Brazil, not as a simple confrontation, [but] rather in live contact with art from the rest of the world.” The idea was to project the city of São Paulo as a world art center.

This first São Paulo biennial was a direct creation of the Museu da Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), opened in 1948 by the businessman sponsor Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (popularly known as “Ciccillo” Matarazzo). The art director for the exhibition was the young art critic Lourival Gomes Machado, who was director of MAM-SP at the time. The event took place in a hall expressly constructed for these purposes in the Trianon Pavilion, Avenida Paulista, on the exact same site where the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) is located today. Around 1800 works from twenty countries were shown, among which the predominant trend was abstract art. At the national level, there were four main prizes awarded in the fields of posters (Antonio Maluf), painting (Danilo di Prete), graphic arts (Oswaldo Goeldi), and sculpture (Victor Brecheret). There were also awards that entailed the acquisition of eleven works, including two architectural projects. The foreign artists awarded prizes were Giuseppe Viviani (graphic arts) from Italy, Max Bill (sculpture) from Switzerland, and Roger Chastel (painting) from France.

At this first round of the São Paulo event, one of the biggest controversies was a reaction to the jury’s rejection of participation by the Brazilian artist Abraham Palatnik. The reason was that Palatnik’s work, Aparelho cinecromático (1949–51),did not fit any of the visual arts categories established. Finally, it was accepted through the back door and ended up receiving an honorable mention from the international jury led by the Argentinean Jorge Romero Brest. However, the work did not appear in the exhibition catalogue. This episode made the public aware of the amateurish nature of the first biennial. The jury was unanimous about the award given to the work Dreiteilige Einheit [Tripartite Unit] by Max Bill. At the same time, the newspapers of the period had an adverse reaction to the award given to an oil on canvas, Limões [Lemons], by Danilo di Prete. The reason for the general disappointment in the painting was that there were no prizes awarded to Brazil’s well-known artists (Lasar Segall, Candido Portinari, and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti). Moreover, the pictorial value of Limões was limited, and in their nationalism, Brazilians were not happy that the prize was awarded to an Italian artist.