THE 22" BIENAL INTERNACIONAL DE SÃO PAULO
HONORING AND RENEW/NG TRAD/T/ON Our 22 nd Biennial will open its doors, not two, but three years after the 21 st show It is not negligence, but a special tribute paid to the 8iennial of Venice, its most famous predecessor, which will be celebrating its 100 th Aniversary in 1995 and has owned for itself a very special place in the world of arts. Such a biennium postponement was undoubtedly an auspicious announcement, since it enabled the successfull completion of an extraordinary event which stands on the same leveI with the most prominent shows of our history. As the arrangements for this Biennial started, the disruption of support in contemporary art proved to be the most relevant issue today. Ali wealth of the manifestations invading the artistic scenario has suddenly encountered a common denominator: expansion of painting or sculptural mass, today's passion. Instal/ations, performances, experiments with new materials,everything is summarized in the desire to escape from territories predetermined by tradition. Even when f,Jainting new inventors work on canvases, they no longer celebrate the cubist discipline or the expressionist irreverence, they tackle instead the unlimited, the absence of boundaries, characteristic the present portrait of our civilization. Therefore, the curator's office selected those contemporary artists capable of shedding light on this path: Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Mira Schendel from Brazil; Joan Mitchell, Julian Schnabel, and Robert Rauschenberg from the United States,' Jesús Soto (Venezuela), José Bedia (Cuba), Pierre Tal-Coat (France), Marcel Broodthaers (Belgium), Per Kirkeby (Denmark), and the group of Chinese artists, highlighted by Deng Lin. There is aIso, Gary Hill, Judith Barry, Paul Garrin (U.S) and Fabrizio Plessi (Italy), who are involved with video installations. But that is not the whole story. It was very important to create a climatized area set up according to museological conditions required to accomodate the group of contemporary art ancestors. This was the onlyway through which the Brazilian public wôuld really perceive the importance of the link between precursors and renewers and would have the rare opportunity to ascertain that art does not mean fashion, but intuition of the unique instant only grasped by real creators. We've made it. We have made possible that Kazimir Malevich . to bring his exhibition, due thanks also to the cooperation by the Russian Museum of Saint Petersburg and Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. The artist's work that has magnificently reviewed' stylistic mutations of the century - impressionism, symbolism, fauvism, futurism, cubism, absolute abstraction - and returned to figuration, can certainly be considered the most important art exhibition held in Brazil, since Picasso at the 2ª Bienal in 1953. Guernica