The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale, which serves as its role model.
Lia Mascarenhas Menna Barreto is a Brazilian studio artist currently based in Rio Grande do Sul.
Brígida Baltar was a Brazilian visual artist. Her work spanned across a wide range of mediums, including video, performance, installation, drawing, and sculpture. She was interested in capturing the ephemeral in her artwork.
Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó was an Argentine-Brazilian artist, researcher, writer, historian and journalist. His nickname and artistic name, Carybé, a type of piranha, comes from his time in the scouts. He died of heart failure after the meeting of a candomblé community's lay board of directors, the Cruz Santa Opô Afonjá Society, of which he was a member.
Lélia Abramo was an Italian-Brazilian actress and political activist.
Gretta Sarfaty, born Alegre Sarfaty, is also known as Gretta Grzywacz and Greta Sarfaty Marchant, also simply as Gretta. is a painter, photographer and multimedia artist who earned international acclaim in the 1970s, from her artistic works related to Body art and Feminism. Born in Greece, in 1947, she moved with her family to São Paulo in 1954, being naturalized as Brazilian.
Iole Antunes de Freitas is a Brazilian sculptor, engraver, and installation artist who works in the field of contemporary art. Freitas began her career in the 1970s, participating in a group of artists in Milan, Italy linked to Body art. She used photography. In the 1980s, she returned to Brazil, but abandoned the human body as mediator of her work, adopting the "sculpture body". The artist uses materials such as wire, canvas, steel, copper, stone, and water to create her works.
Jacqueline "Jac" Leirner is a Brazilian artist. Leirner is best known for the sculptures and installations she creates from mundane objects and ephemera, including devalued bank notes, used envelopes, promotional tickets, empty packs of cigarettes and plastic shopping bags.
Waldemar Cordeiro was an Italian-born Brazilian art critic and artist. He worked as a computer artist in the early days of computer art and was a pioneer of the concrete art movement in Latin America.
Hermelindo Fiaminghi was a Brazilian painter, designer, graphic designer, lithographer, professor, and art critic, known for his geometric works and exploration of color.
Geraldo de Barros was a Brazilian painter and photographer who also worked in engraving, graphic arts, and industrial design. He was a leader of the concrete art movement in Brazil, co-founding Grupo Ruptura and was known for his trailblazing work in experimental abstract photography and modernism. According to The Guardian, De Barros was "one of the most influential Brazilian artists of the 20th century." De Barros is best known for his Fotoformas (1946-1952), a series of photographs that used multiple exposures, rotated images, and abstracted forms to capture a phenomenological experience of Brazil's exponential urbanization in the mid-twentieth century.
Hildegard Baum Rosenthal was a Swiss-born Brazilian photographer, the first woman photojournalist in Brazil. She was part of the generation of European photographers who emigrated during World War II and, acting in the local press, contributed to the photographic aesthetic renovation of Brazilian newspapers.
Alice Brill was a German-born Brazilian photographer, painter, and art critic.
Yolanda Léderer Mohalyi was a painter and designer who worked with woodcuts, mosaics, stained glass and murals as well as more usual materials. Her early work was figurative, but she increasingly moved towards abstract expressionism. With artists such as Waldemar da Costa and Cicero Dias, she opened the way for abstraction in Latin American art.
Grupo Ruptura was created by a collection of artists who sought to advance modern art in Brazil in the 1950s. Together, they held an exhibition entitled Ruptura at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art in 1952. The group embraced concrete art as a break from traditional naturalistic painting popular in Brazil at the time. Grupo Ruptura's works are often characterized by strong geometric shapes and bold colors.
Décio Rodrigues Villares was a Brazilian painter, sculptor, caricaturist, and graphic designer. He is best known for helping to design the blue disc on the Brazilian Flag and his designs for the monument honoring Júlio de Castilhos.
Mariza Dias Costa was a Guatemalan-Brazilian political cartoonist and illustrator who influenced her genre with her novel approach.
Mariannita Luzzati is a Brazilian visual artist from São Paulo, recognized for her extensive study of landscapes.
Renata Pallottini or Renata Monachesi Pallottini was a Brazilian playwright, essayist, poet, theater professor and translator. She was an award-winning author of poetry, plays, essays, fiction, children's literature, theater theory, and television programs who was notable in the Brazilian literary and theater scenes. In a considerable part of her production, it is possible to identify the questioning and the combat against the social values that delimitated the woman's role in society.
Maria Lídia dos Santos Magliani was a Brazilian painter, designer, engraver, illustrator, costume designer and set designer..
