**Abstract**

In this article we analyze, within the context of the decades between 1940 and 1960, children's art exhibits as a strategy for asserting the importance of Art in educating and developing a child's personality, using newspaper articles, pictures, children's drawings, reports and other institutional documents as sources. The artistic vanguards of the early 20th century, advocates of the artist's self expression, and the acknowledgement – by Psychology and Pedagogy – of the specificities of being a child have resulted both in the defense of the child's freedom of artistic expression, and in a renewal of Art and education concepts of that period of time. As of the mid '40s, children's art caught UNESCO's attention because it represented potential integration and fraternity among people and the desire to build a new Man. Such exhibits acted as showcases for several ideas and justified the importance of children's art involving, in the Brazilian context, from governmental agencies to national newspapers and private companies. Aiming at inculcating an educational conduct based on assumptions such as the unrestricted freedom of children's creative spirit they had, as a contradiction, the censorship of themes considered unsuitable such as violence, and the need to follow a pre-defined esthetic standard.

**Keywords:** art teaching, history of art education, children's art, children's exhibitions, free expression
