This essay by the curator, professor, and art critic Lisbeth (Ruth Rebollo) Gonçalves was the introductory text in As Bienais e a Abstração. A Década de ’50, the catalogue for the fifth exhibition in the Ciclo de Exposições da Pintura Brasileira Contemporânea, organized by the Museu Lasar Segall in 1978; the Ciclo presented a total of seven exhibitions from 1974 to 1979. Gonçalves provides a measure of context for the art produced in Brazil during the 1950s by documenting historical details from the 1940s that contributed to the transition from one decade to another. She also sheds light on the cultural influence exerted by certain key institutions, such as the Museu de Art de São Paulo (MASP), the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM SP), and the Bienal de São Paulo.
Gonçalves is currently the president of the Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte – Sección Brasil (AICA). She was also, at an earlier date, the president of the Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte (ABCA). She is a member of the faculty at the Universidade de São Paulo (ECA USP)—where she teaches at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes—and works for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC-USP) at the same university. Gonçalves has written extensively about Brazilian art produced during the last fifty years, with a particular focus on the painter Aldo Bonadei, the designer and landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx, Brazilian Constructivist art, and the permanent collections held in various museums. She has also written exhaustively about Sérgio Milliet’s revision of art criticism. She spearheaded the group of researchers and specialists who produced the book Arte Brasileira no Século XX (Brazilian Art in the Twentieth Century), published in 2007. [See another of her articles in the ICAA digital archive: “Regionalidade e universalidade na expressão artística latino-americana” (doc. no. 808332)].
[On the subject of Brazilian abstract art in the 1950s, see the following two articles: “Da abstração a auto-expressão” by Mario Pedrosa (doc. no. 1085707) and “Indiscutivelmente, em nossas artes do desenho (...)” by Geraldo Ferraz (doc. no. 1110611)].
