A guide for art lovers in São Paulo in the second semester of 2025

The second semester of 2025 has already started and the most important art events of the season in São Paulo are about to start. The city reassures its global, prominent position by hosting word-class art events. On this article, you will read about an art fair called Rotas, the São Paulo Biennale, a show at MASP, and another at Pinacoteca.

• ROTAS 

​This art fair is organized and run by the same organisation as SP-Arte, the main fair in Brazil, that occurs in April, at the São Paulo Biennale’s pavilion. Rotas’ preview will take place at Arca, which previously was an industrial shed, on the 27th August and the event will finish on the 31st.

​Until last edition, it was called Rotas Brasileiras (Brazilian Routes). They have changed its name to broaden its scope. The fair is focused on curation. Smaller in size, but big in relevance. Rodrigo Moura, now at the Argentina MALBA, is the artistic director. There will be 60 projects, from art galleries to institutions.

• 36TH SAO PAULO BIENNALE

Curated by a team led by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, a Cameron curator based in Berlin, the mega event will be open to the public from the 6th September through 11st January. Its theme is based on an enigmatic poem by Afro-Brazilian Conceição Evaristo. It is aimed at rethinking humankind as a verb, that is, to reimagine life and its relations and asymmetries.

As Andrea Pinheiro, the president of Biennale’s Foundation, has pointed out, this exhibition is ‘a historical heritage of our country’. It takes place on the same pavilion since 1953. This edition will gather 125 artists from every corner of the world. It is important to say, 28% of them are from Africa, 25% from South America, 16% from Asia and 16% from Europe. This continues the 2023 edition, where most of the participants were non white. The idea behind it is to be more representative of what is being done by the artists.
After its opening, you will read a review of it by me here on London Art Walk.

• MASP

A group show named ‘Histories of Ecology’ is to be opened on August at MASP, perhaps the most renowned art museum in the town. Since 2016, the museum dedicates one or two years to a theme. In this sense, they have had the ‘Histories of childhood’, ‘Histories of sexuality’, ‘Afro-Atlantic histories’, ‘Female and feminist histories’ and ‘LGBTQIA+ histories’, among others.

‘Histories of Ecology’ will gather artists and collectives from across the world that deal with the climatic, political, territorial and social crises in their works. It will investigate the links between the living beings, its creations and where they live. Regarding the theme, currently on show there is an exhibit by Claude Monet, in which his paintings are linked to the climate crisis that was starting to form when he was active. It aims at re-reading his relation to nature and the modernisation of the landscape.

• PINACOTECA

In this museum, the show titled ‘Pop Brazil: avant-garde and new figuration, 1960-70’ is on display, until 5th October. Curated by Pollyana Quintella and Yuri Quevedo, it brings together 250 works by more than 100 artists that relate to the pop art in Brazil. Among us, pop art was influenced not only by massification of media (tv, press, etc) but also by the political context, both of Cold War and the dictatorship under which we were living. The curators stated that ‘The exhibition explores a moment in the nation’s history that still echoes in our everyday lives. Engaging with this work is key to understanding the emergence of contemporary art in our context.’ You will see Antônio Dias, Geraldo de Barros, Lygia Pape, Nelson Leirner, Teresinha Soares, and Wanda Pimentel, among others.

This show is taking place on the Pina Contemporânea building, where you can eat at Fitó, a restaurant that serves typical Brazilian food, from snacks to lunch, and from coffee to cocktails.

Luis Sandes for London Art Walk
August 2025