This newspaper article, dated November 1968, chronicles the interview in which Enock Sacramento asked the Concrete artist Luís Sacilotto about the recent opening of an exhibition of his works at the Salon de Arte Contemporânea de Santo André (on the outskirts of São Paulo), in the town where Sacilotto was born. The exhibition, which was held at the Palácio da Cultura in Santo André (Sala Especial no. 1), included thirty works that Sacilotto had produced from 1944 to 1960, many of which had never been shown before. The Brazilian art critic noted Sacilotto’s considerable international success—including his involvement in a wide-ranging exhibition of Concrete art organized by Max Bill at the Helmhaus in Zurich in 1960—as compared to his relative anonymity in his own country. Sacilotto talks about having this opportunity to show people in Santo André his works that illustrate his transition from figurative art to Constructivist art. 

This partial clipping from the Diário do Grande ABC—the local newspaper for the greater São Paulo region that encompasses the “ABC” (Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, and São Caetano)—is the best copy that has been found so far of the 1968 Sacramento interview. It is indicative of the degree to which Brazilian intellectuals were interested in the work of Luís Sacilotto (1924−2003). He was one of the members of the Grupo ruptura who signed the group’s manifesto in 1952 [see, in the ICAA digital archive the printed copy (doc. no. 771349) and manuscript (doc. no. 1232213)]. Together with Waldemar Cordeiro, Geraldo de Barros, Lothar Charoux, Leopoldo Haar, Kazimir Fejer, and Anatol Wladislaw, Sacilotto was one of the forerunners of paulista (São Paulo) Concrete art, which, along with the Grupo Frente (1952–57, led by Ivan Serpa in Rio de Janeiro) launched a process that unfolded alongside and in step with the modernization and internationalization of Brazilian art during that decade. The paulista concept of voluntad de orden (desire for order) echoed similar ideals that underpinned the developmental policies Brazil adopted in the 1950s. Its influence was therefore felt far beyond the realm of Geometric Abstraction; until the early 1970s certain defining values of Brazilian Constructivist art (objectivity, clarity of thought, reduction and simplification of aesthetic media, abandonment of suggestive excesses) transcended the boundaries of painting and were adopted across the entire spectrum of Brazilian culture.  

The 1960 exhibition that Sacramento mentioned in the interview was Konkrete Kunst. 50 Jahre Entwicklung (Concrete Art: Fifty Years of Development) organized by the Swiss artist Max Bill (1908−1994) at the Helmhaus in Zurich. There was, in fact, a precedent: the exhibition Konkrete Kunst (Concrete Art) took place in 1944, in Basel, also curated by Bill. But the 1960 exhibition not only stresses the half-century of “concrete” development: it also, more importantly, testifies to the strengthening of an international network of Concrete artists in Europe and South America (mainly Argentina and Brazil). In addition to Sacilotto, Lygia Pape and Hércules Barsotti were also there to represent Brazil.