The building is now numbered 336 on Libero Badaró street. The ground floor, which houses the Pirandello restaurant, is number 332.

In last Sunday's edition, January 27, the newspaper The state of Sao Paulo published an article in which the researcher Edgar Santo Moretti would have discovered the exact place where one of the first – and most important – exhibitions by Anita Malfatti would have been held, in December 1917.

The space that today refers to the building at number 336, with ground floor 332, on Rua Líbero Badaró, in downtown São Paulo, at that time was number 111. On May 20, 1916, an engineer named Gustavo Lara Campos received a permit from the city ​​hall to build a building there. His contractor was Antonio de Toledo Lara, Count Lara (1864-1935).

Before a building was erected, the site was home to a ceramics store and also a flower wreath factory for the dead. After the building was erected, Count Lara began to give up the ground floor space so that art exhibitions could be held, especially those that dared. The place became known as Salão da Líbero Badaró 111 or as Salão do Palacete Lara.

There are also historical references that name 185 Rua Álvares Penteado as Palacete Lara and also the building that is now known as Palacete Tereza de Toledo Lara – named after the Count’s daughter – and today is the headquarters of Casa de Francisca. The place is known as 'A Esquina Musical de São Paulo' for having been the headquarters of Rádio Record and several instrument stores over the last century. This indicates that all the properties that belonged to the entrepreneur, founder of the Antarctica beverage factory, received the title of 'Palacete Lara'.

In addition to hosting Anita's exhibition, which serves as a landmark of the modernist movement, the hall had previously hosted exhibitions by Alfredo Norfini and the Argentine SM Franciscovich, among others. This exhibition by Malfatti, opened on December 12, 1917 and entitled Exhibition of Modern Painting, It was not the artist's first exhibition, as many believe, but it was fundamental for the substantiality of modernism in her canvases, which caused heated debates in the cultural milieu of the time, culminating in the Modern Art Week of 1922.

 

 


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