Agostinho Batista de Freitas worked on the countryside until the age of 11, when he moved to São Paulo and got a job in a toy factory. According to the artist himself, he was dismissed for drawing during his shifts. Pietro Maria Bardi (1900–1999), founding director of MASP, met him in the early 1950s on the central zone of the city, where he used to paint outdoors and sell his work. In 1952, Batista de Freitas had a solo show in the museum upon invitation of Bardi. Circo Piolin no vão do MASP is structured in two major horizontal plans. On the top, the museum represents the traditional knowledge and art history. One cannot see its interior, the façade of vertical glass plates reflects treetops in front of it, at Parque Trianon. Below, the free span is occupied by a circus, a manifestation of the so-called popular culture, such a dear theme to Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), architect of MASP. Families cross the avenue towards the entrance of the Piolin Circus, observed by the Piolin clown (1897–1973) on the left. A common aspect of Batista de Freitas’s paintings, the spelling of names is not correct, and the sign bearing the circus’s name brings “Piolim,” with an “m.” The long line of awaiting circus spectators contrasts with the lonely figure of a single visitor going up the concrete stairs, possibly a comment of the artist regarding the positions assumed by the popular and the scholarly.
— Fernando Oliva, 2017
