In this review of Ademar Manarini’s photography exhibition, at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Wolfgang Pfeiffer notes the quality of the photographs. The critic is acutely aware of the debate in progress about the visual arts, which he interprets as a renewal of the genre. He mentions the success of the exhibition, and comments on the spirit of enquiry and originality that emanates from the collection of pure, free forms that test the limits of Abstract art. Manarini uses still photographs, sometimes superimposing them, sometimes turning them over. This review, which introduced the exhibition, draws attention to the links or connections between several kinds of art, and notes the vagueness of some of the (pictorial, graphic, and photographic) processes the artist uses to create his works within the confines of a strictly formal language.      

Ademar Manarini’s exhibition, which was sponsored by the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, opened on July 7, 1954 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. He had shown his photographs there on a previous occasion as part of a group exhibition of works produced by the controversial ruptura group (led by Waldemar Cordeiro, the Brazilian concrete art theorist), with which Manarini was associated. Aside from his involvement in the II Bienal de São Paulo (1953), Manarini became interested in Abstract photography, along the lines of the work produced by Geraldo de Barros (another member of the ruptura group). 

The German art critic and historian Wolfgang Pfeiffer came to Brazil in 1948. He was the technical director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (1951–59) for eight years, and was also active in the organization of the Bienal de São Paulo. The Boletim Foto-Cine, where this review appeared, was published by the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, the major non-professional photographers’ association in São Paulo (founded in 1946), which was directed by the photographer Eduardo Salvatore. Decades later, Pfeiffer became a successful businessman and built a large paper goods factory in Suzano, near São Paulo.