Bulgaria’s Participation in the Biennale in São Paulo in the 1960s
Bulgaria’s Participation in the Biennale in São Paulo in the 1960s

Summary/Abstract: The dynamics of the Brazilian International Biennial in the 1960s evolved from an upsurge and growth to a boycott of the forum in 1969. The article presents the Bulgarian participations in the Biennial in São Paulo in this context with an emphasis on the place of the Bulgarian collections among other national participations. The works from Bulgaria, as in other international biennales during the period, are distinguished by their figurativeness, by their interest in pre-academic art and in themes of revolutions – national and social. The international forum in Brazil, compared to biennales in European context, opens the stage more widely to contemporary art on other continents, and hence to figurative imagery with a reworking of local visual culture in the early 1960s. Forms of engaged art from Latin America in particular are also more widely represented. Although the Bulgarian collections especially after the mid-1960s stand in isolation as artistic issue, their consideration within a broader picture of world art is interesting from today's perspective.

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