Place
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Modernist pavilion where one industrialist's fortune bankrolled a landmark art biennial.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo asks why an industrialist whose family fortune came from sausages, flour and cotton would spend it flying paintings across an ocean for a word nobody here had even heard yet. It follows Francisco "Ciccillo" Matarazzo Sobrinho's 1951 gamble on an exhibition modeled on Venice's, and the coup he pulled off three years later borrowing a famous Picasso painting for the city's 400th birthday. Stand under the pavilion's unbroken floor, built by Oscar Niemeyer through the early 1950s, as you listen.
This audio guide was created using AI.