France-Brazil Cultural Year: São Paulo Exhibitions Spotlight Fernand Léger

In early May 2009, São Paulo's center was animated by the virada cultural, a large street event featuring fifteen French troupes invited by Jean-Marie Songy. Concurrently, the Pinacoteca, with its park illuminated by the Carabosse company, mounted two significant exhibitions. The first, comprising about fifty paintings, drawings, and prints, examined Fernand Léger's relations and friendships with Brazil, highlighting his influence on Brazilian modernism and his contacts with Tarsila do Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, and Oscar Niemeyer, the latter in connection with a mural project for the Ibirapuera Park auditorium.