Bursting Bienal

Brazil's harassed new President Joao Goulart sent a letter saying that he could not possibly get around to opening the exhibition before the end of the month; but those in charge of the sixth Sao Paulo Bienal decided not to wait to announce the prizewinners. The art world was impatiently waiting; the Bienal ranks with the Venice Biennale and the Carnegie International Art show in Pittsburgh as tops in prestige. And this year the Sao Paulo show is huge: 4,000 works by 1,049 artists from 51 nations--much too much to be absorbed.

Though predominantly contemporary and abstract, the exhibition ranged the centuries. Yugoslavia sent reproductions of 22 of the country's 6,000 medieval Byzantine frescoes. There was a room of powerful Orozco oils from Mexico, a retrospective of Jacques Villon from France. The Soviet Union sent its customary assortment of Lenin portraits and statues of muscled workers. Cuba followed suit with some bearded Fidelistas and a ten-foot woodcut showing Uncle Sam, abetted by imperialist lackeys from the Associated Press and the United Press, stamping on the "bleeding Cuban people." Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art picked the U.S. entries, which included 34 abstractions by Robert Motherwell, two figurative paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, a couple of Leon Golub monsters, engravings by Leonard Baskin, constructions by Reuben Nakian and Richard Stankiewicz.

The $3,700 top award, the Sao Paulo Town Hall Prize, went to France's Portuguese-born Vieira da Silva, 53. Large Constructions (see color) is one of ten of her paintings in the show. But Bienal awards are given more for overall achievement than for individual entries, and Painter Vieira da Silva's achievement has been notable (see below). Among the other winners, each of whom received $1,100:

> The U.S.'s Leonard Baskin, 39, Best Foreign Engraver. The youngest of the winners, Baskin is obsessed by the human nightmare which he expresses through torn and tormented figures.

>Argentina's Alicia Penalba, 43, Best Foreign Sculptor. A former student of Ossip Zadkine in Paris, Sculptor Penalba turns out monumental bronze and stone abstractions that have a considerable range: a cluster of balanced chunks that remotely suggest a huge cactus, a set of rippling spires that seem to move upwards, a hollowed and pierced sculpture that might have been fashioned by the lash of the sea.

> Poland's Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, 62, Best Foreign Graphic Artist. One of the most representational of the exhibitors, Kulisiewicz is frugal of line, heavy in mood. His most striking work: The Dance of the Old Men, in which three aching figures hobble about on canes, their grotesque heads stiffly bobbing in rhythm.

> Japan's Yoshishige Saito, 56, Best Foreign Painter. A pioneer abstractionist in his own country, Saito turns out paintings that look disconcertingly like road maps.

> West Germany's Julius Bissier, 68, winner of a special Sao Paulo Tenth Anniversary Award. Though he has been painting all his life, Bissier was almost unknown until about three years ago, was thus the pleasantest surprise of the entire Bienal. His Klee-like abstractions (see color) consist of feathery blobs of color that float mindlessly across his rough surfaces with no apparent relationship. Bissier says that his inspiration comes from Zen Buddhism, which he has been studying since 1920. His childlike blobs come close to resembling ancient religious symbols, though never close enough to be identified.

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