Serpa, Portinari, Palatnik and Pedrosa: The Drama of an "Artistic Moment" in Rio de Janeiro, 1951

A study of three artworks, by three artists, all created in Rio de Janeiro in 1951 and exhibited at the first Bienal de São Paulo, which despite their formal differences, reveal new meanings and histories through the juxtaposition of contemporaneous objects. It also demonstrates how influential art critic, Mário Pedrosa, in his description of the renewal of the visual arts in Brazil at this time, relied on ambiguous terminologies, such as nationalism and vanguard, that constantly shift in meaning.