The Institution of the Modern

The Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo has about 12,000 artworks in its collection. This important heritage allows us to present innumerable visions of the art regarding the complex relations between local and global, as well as between Brazilian and international production. In addition, it is a fertile field for the exploration of different thematic nuclei that refer to the specificities of the history of the museum and the way its collection was formed.

The long-term exhibition "Visões do Arte no Acervo MAC USP 1900-2000" (Visions of Art in the Collection of MAC USP), currently on the seventh and sixth floors of this building, materializes one among many possible readings of the collection. This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. In order to draw a path through the last century, it was necessary to make choices, calibrating presences and absences, which led us to leave out many works and artists considered emblematic, either by the visiting public or by the Museum's educators.

This exhibition here is a complementary selection to the exhibition "Visões do Arte no Acervo MAC USP, 1900-2000" (Visions of Art in the Collection of MAC USP), and focus on the process of instauration of the modern art discourse in Brazil, which, as known, is well represented in MAC USP collection. In this way, the public can find (again) the artworks from the first half of the twentieth century. Here we have works that have been produced in the context of the most important aspects of modern art: the divisionism experience of Balla; the use of abstract language (informal and geometric) by artists such as Bérard and Vordemberg-Gildewart; the surrealising figure of Maria Martins; and the primitivist interpretations of Victor Brecheret.