Rio's colonial architecture
Despite the important urban transformations that Rio has undergone since its origins, there are still baroque buildings from the 17th century such as the São Bento Monastery or the Santo Antônio Convent. There are also buildings from the 18th century such as theigreja São Francisco da Penitencia (St. Francisof Penitence) and the aqueduct that today constitutes the Lapa arches(arcos de Lapa) built in 1768. The governors and then the Portuguese court, who fled the Napoleonic invasions in 1808, settled in the heart of an urban complex located today around the Praça XV (Rio Antigo, Arcos de Telles). It is the elegant Paço Imperial surrounded by its beautiful churches like the colonial Catholic church Nossa Senhora Mae dos Homens (Our Lady Mother of Men) founded in 1758. Its facade was redone in 1856 in neoclassical style. It is one of the few churches with a curvilinear plan. The curved interior is richly decorated with careful details. The spectacular altar features the works of the master Inácio Ferreira Pinto and the image of the saint, carved in wood
The Minas Gerais baroque-rococo religious and civil
Minas is an essential step in Brazilian cultural tourism. The development of baroque art, of an exceptional profusion, is here the fruit of the major role of the Catholic Church and of the wealth from the gold mines. The overloaded churches, with their draperies and carved wood, are sumptuously decorated, the orders and brotherhoods challenge each other through the opulence of the finery of their parish. They need artists and builders. The guild system allowed talented but penniless apprentices to develop their art with masters (which would no longer be possible after the French instituted the Academies of Fine Arts, accessible only to people from the privileged classes). The heaviness of certain decorations contrasts with the naïve expression of the painted or sculpted characters, such as those of the Way of the Cross in Congonhas, of a rare finesse. Two names will mark the baroque architecture: the sculptor Aleijadinho and the painter Ataíde. Their chisels will carve and their brushes will paint the soapstone capitals and the wooden ceilings of the most beautiful churches of Minas. In 1766, Aleijadinho produced in Ouro Preto theigreja São Francisco de Assis, a masterpiece of Brazilian Baroque with its undulating curves on the façade. Ouro Preto but also Tiradentes, Diamantina, Sabarà or Mariana are among the cities where religious and civil monuments express all the prosperity of the 19th century. In November, a week of festivities, the Semana de Aleijadinho, pays tribute to the master.
French neoclassical trend and eclecticism
In the nineteenth century, positivism gave pride of place to art, French architecture and imposing buildings. A French cultural mission was invited to Rio by João VI in 1816 to develop the teaching of Fine Arts and to transform Rio into a little Paris: under the inspired leadership of the painter Jean-Baptiste Debret and Granjean de Montigny and Levasseur, the architects, this mission left an indelible mark. Morros were razed to the ground to remodel and open up neighborhoods and buildings were constructed in the "French style", such as the France-Brazil House or the Palacio do Catete. Neoclassicism was to inscribe in the stone a definitively French touch. Many palaces of eclectic style were built in the same line, mixing Gothic influence, neoclassicism and Italian Renaissance with massive colonnades and imperial gilding. The Municipal Theater, for example, is strongly inspired by the Opéra Garnier in Paris, and the Museo nacional de Belas Artes, another of the Centro's architectural marvels, as is the Palácio D. João IV, now the new MAR Museum, and the Copacabana Palace.
The Art Deco and Modernist current in Rio and Belo Horizonte
In the 20th century, Rio's center took on an American verticality, influenced by the wave of Art Deco and modernist skyscrapers that were being built in the United States. This Art Nouveau style enriched the city with the glass windows of the famous Confeitaria Colombo and the now famous Central do Brasil train station immortalized in the film by Walter Salles. The Cristo Redentor of Corcovado remains the most edifying example of the Art Deco wave in Rio. Then Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies von der Rohe inspired the greatest Brazilian architect of the time, Oscar Niemeyer (born in 1907), who played a major role in the architectural design of many buildings in Rio, such as the Capanema Palace and the emblematic Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC) in Niteroi, with its pure and futuristic lines, or the Pampulha district in Belo Horizonte. If some remarkable buildings have been destroyed (its current is contested for its aesthetics), there remains the fabulous building of the MAM museum or the Santos Dumont airport. The metropolitan cathedral with its brutalist modernism stands out in the landscape of Rio's business district
Porto Maravilha
Thanks to the impetus of the Olympic Games held in Rio in 2016, the pharaonic urban renewal project of Porto Maravilha in Centro has transformed Rio's long-neglected port district into a business and cultural district where it is good to live while taking into consideration sustainable development issues. Two new museums have been built, the Museo de Arte do Rio (MAR) and the impressive Museu do Amanhã, designed by Santiago Calatrava, as well as the largest open-air urban art gallery in the country.
Great architects of the region
Aleijadinho, Antonio Francisco Lisboa. Master of the Baroque mineiro, Aleijadinho is the most famous artist of the Brazilian Baroque. Son of a Portuguese architect and a freed slave, Antonio Francisco Lisboa (1738-1814) was nicknamed the Aleijadinho (the little cripple) because at the age of 40 he was afflicted with incurable rheumatic diseases, comparable to the effects of leprosy, mutilating his hands and feet. He worked the last eighteen years of his life by having his tools tied to his limbs. Since childhood, his father associated him with his work as an architect and he participated in the project of the Carmelite Church in Ouro Preto. In Minas Gerais, in the middle of the 18th century, there were less than 40,000 whites for more than 100,000 blacks. As F. Cali suggests (The Art of the Conquistadores): "Perhaps the best human definition of colonial baroque, adulterous art, mestizo or mulatto art, is this painful encounter between two races on a third continent Aleijadinho is one of the great figures of sculpture and baroque art in Minas Gerais; he participated in the construction and decoration of about fifty sanctuaries and gave Brazil its first architectural manifesto. But as a man of color, guilty ofinfamia mulato
, he was forbidden to sign a contract. He ended his life poor, without the title of master builder. His facades of the churches of São Francisco, in Ouro Preto (1766) and São João del-Rei (1774), sculpted in steatite, and the statues of twelve human-sized prophets with theatrical gestures decorating the terraced staircase of the Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas do Campo, as well as the set of polychrome wooden statues of the seven Passion chapels, are noteworthy. The seventy figures of this Way of the Cross are remarkably expressive. The simplification of their forms already announces impressionism.Oscar Niemeyer.
He is the greatest, the most prolific and the most famous Brazilian architect. Father of modern architecture, nourished by the international style, his monumental work is characterized by minimalism, clean lines and functional form. Oscar Niemeyer was the designer of the main public monuments of the city of Brasilia, the administrative capital of the country newly founded in 1960, out of nowhere, in the middle of the virgin forest. The astonishing hyperboloid structure of the Brasília Cathedral, the National Congress, the National Theater and the Palace of Justice are all buildings designed by the brilliant Niemeyer. A visionary symbol of Oscar Niemeyer's exceptional architectural work, Brasilia is the only city built in the 20th century that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. A few years earlier, this lover of concrete, abstract curves and gigantism had already proven himself in Belo Horizonte by creating several modernist buildings, notably in the Pampulha district. He also participated in the design of the United Nations headquarters in New York between 1947 and 1952, as part of a team that included Le Corbusier. A convinced Communist and profoundly humanist, he had to go into exile in 1965 because of the dictatorship and took refuge in France, where he designed, among other things, the headquarters of the French Communist Party, Place du Colonel Fabien in Paris. It was not until 1985 that he returned to Brazil to continue his work. In 1996, as he approached his 100th birthday, Oscar Niemeyer designed the superb Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Niterói. This futuristic flying saucer of white concrete dominates the Guanabara Bay, opposite Rio de Janeiro.In Niteroí, a city not often visited by tourists, the Caminho Niemeyer allows you to discover 6 other buildings created by the architect. Inaugurated in 2013, the Niemeyer Way is, after Brasilia, the second largest architectural ensemble of the Brazilian master. Several of his creations can also be found in São Paulo in the Parque Ibirapuera.
Winner of the Pritzker Price in 1988, at the age of 81, Oscar Niemeyer will have designed 600 buildings in the world during his 70-year career. He died on December 5, 2012, on the eve of his 105th birthday, in his birthplace, Rio de Janeiro, on the immense Avenida Atlântica, in one of the buildings he designed.
