An exhibition celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the founding of Brasilia, with 300 works on the ideas and historical figures involved in the Brazilian capital, will open on September 15 at the Museu dos Coches, in Lisbon, the organization announced.
As part of the official celebrations of the Bicentennial of Brazil’s Independence, the exhibition has already passed through Paris, Berlin, London, Rome, among 12 cities, and is entitled ‘Brasília – From Utopia to Capital’.
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The exhibition, which will remain at the Museu Nacional dos Coches until October 30, with free admission, celebrates the 62nd anniversary of the Brazilian capital by telling the historical path that led to the creation of a city that mirrors the Brazilian modernist thought.
Around 300 works of art and documents, including models of iconic buildings designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, have been brought together in this exhibition about a city conceived as a “complete work of art”, and a reference of the new phase of interiorization of the country’s public power, previously concentrated on the coast.
The show is the result of extensive research work by the curator Danielle Athayde at the Fundação Ortega y Gasset, in Madrid, Spain, and also includes drawings and photographic model of the urban plan by Lucio Costa, sculptures by Maria Martins, Bruno Giorgi and Alfredo Ceschiatti, and photographs by Marcel Gautherot, Peter Scheier, Jean Manzon and Mário Fontenelle.
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The works come from Brazilian public and private collections, including the Moreira Salles Institute, the Public Archive of the Federal District, and the Brasília Collection – the Izolete and Domício Pereira collection.
The transfer of Brazil’s capital from the Atlantic coast to the center-west of its territory, in the early 1960s, “awakened a feeling of developmental euphoria in the Brazilian population,” the organization recalls in a statement about the historical context of the city’s founding.
“Ordinary people, driven by the desire to be part of the dream of building a new city, the seat of government, moved from the comfort of their families and their hometowns, especially from northeastern Brazil, toward the Midwest,” it describes.
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The site “became a construction site of epic proportions, with precarious accommodation centers, one of them being Cidade Livre (Free City), which housed more than 30 thousand workers during the construction, which lasted three years and 10 months,” he also recalls.
The exhibition evokes the effort to build Brasília, shared by civil servants, architects, artists and ‘candangos’ – “workers from various fields of knowledge generally belonging to the popular classes” -, through historical documents, such as the Pilot Plan project, proposed by Lucio Costa.
The cathedral, the landscape projects, the public spaces, such as the City Park, and the Itamaraty Palace, are some of the projects that can be known in detail in this exhibition.
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‘Brasília – From utopia to the Capital’ is a realization of Artetude Produções with special participation of Coleção Brasília, support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, and institutional support from Casa da América Latina, União das Cidades capitais de Língua Portuguesa and the Embassy of Brazil in Lisbon.
