Rio's colonial architecture
Despite the major urban transformations that Rio has undergone since its origins, some magnificent 17th-century Baroque buildings can still be seen, such as the São Bento monastery and the Santo Antônio convent. Other 18th-century buildings include theigreja São Francisco da Penitência and the aqueduct that today forms the Lapa arches(arcos da Lapa), built in 1768. The governors and then the Portuguese court, fleeing the Napoleonic invasions in 1808, settled in the heart of an urban complex that today surrounds Praça XV (Rio Antigo, Arc de Telles). This is the elegant Paço Imperial, surrounded by beautiful churches such as the colonial Catholic church of Nossa Senhora Mãe dos Homens, founded in 1758. Its façade, rebuilt in 1856, is in the neoclassical style. It is one of the few churches with a curvilinear plan. The curved interior is richly decorated with meticulous detail. The spectacular altar features works by master artist Inácio Ferreira Pinto and the image of the saint, carved in wood.
Religious and secular rococo baroque in Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is a must for Brazilian cultural tourism. The development of Baroque art, of exceptional profusion, is here the fruit of the major role played by the Catholic Church and the wealth derived from gold mining. Overloaded churches, with their drapery and carved wood, were sumptuously decorated, and orders and brotherhoods challenged each other with the opulence of their parish's finery. They need artists and builders. The guild system enabled talented but penniless apprentices to develop their art with masters (which would no longer be possible once the French instituted the Beaux-Arts academies, accessible only to people from the privileged classes). The heaviness of certain decorations contrasts with the naive expression of the painted or sculpted figures, such as those on the Stations of the Cross in Congonhas, of rare finesse. Two names were to leave their mark on Baroque architecture: the sculptor Aleijadinho and the painter Ataíde. Their chisels carved and their brushes painted the soapstone capitals and wooden ceilings of Minas' most beautiful churches. In 1766, Aleijadinho produced theigreja São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto, a masterpiece of Brazilian Baroque with its undulating curves on the façade. Ouro Preto, but also Tiradentes, Diamantina, Sabará and Mariana, are among the cities where religious and civil monuments express 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 19th 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 transform Rio into a little Paris: under the inspired leadership of painter Jean-Baptiste Debret and architects Granjean de Montigny and Levasseur, this mission left an indelible mark. Morros were razed to the ground to remodel and open up neighborhoods, and French-style buildings were constructed, such as the Maison France-Brésil and the Palacio do Catete. Neoclassicism gave stone a definitively French touch. A number of eclectic palaces were built in the same style, blending Gothic, neoclassical and Italian Renaissance influences with massive colonnades and imperial gilding. These include the Municipal Theatre, strongly inspired by the Opéra Garnier in Paris, and the Museo nacional de Belas Artes, another of the Centro's architectural marvels, as well as 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 springing up in the United States. This Art Nouveau style enriched the city with the stained-glass windows of the famous Confeitaria Colombo and the now-famous Central do Brasil train station, immortalized in Walter Salles' film. Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado remains the most edifying example of the Art Deco wave in Rio. Later, Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies van 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 Rio buildings, such as the Capanema palace and the emblematic Museu de Arte Contemporânea - MAC in Niteroi, with its pure, futuristic lines, or the Pampulha district in Belo Horizonte. Although some remarkable buildings have been destroyed (his style is disputed for its aesthetics), the fabulous MAM museum and Santos Dumont airport remain. 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 Mineiro Baroque, Aleijadinho is the most remarkable artist of the Brazilian Baroque. The 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 affections comparable to the effects of leprosy, mutilating his hands and feet. For the last eighteen years of his life, he worked with tools attached to his stumps. From childhood, his father associated him with his work as an architect, and he took part in the Carmelite church project in Ouro Preto. In Minas Gerais, in the mid-18th century, there were less than 40,000 whites and more than 100,000 blacks. As F. Cali suggests (L'Art des Conquistadores): "Perhaps colonial baroque, adulterous art, mestizo or mulatto art, can best be defined in human terms by this painful encounter between two races on a third continent." Aleijadinho is one of the great figures of Minas Gerais Baroque sculpture and art; he participated in the construction and decoration of some fifty sanctuaries, and gave Brazil its first architectural manifesto. But as a man of color, guilty ofmulatto infamy, he was forbidden to sign a contract. He ended his life in poverty, without the title of master builder. His most famous works include the steatite facades of the churches of São Francisco in Ouro Preto (1766) and São João del-Rei (1774), 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 polychrome wooden statues of the seven Passion chapels. The seventy figures of this Stations of the Cross are remarkably expressive.
Oscar Niemeyer. Brazil's greatest, most prolific and most famous architect. The father of modern architecture, nourished by the international style, his monumental work is characterized by minimalism, clean lines and functional form. Oscar Niemeyer designed the main public monuments in Brasilia, the country's newly-founded administrative capital in 1960, out of nowhere, in the middle of the rainforest. The astonishing hyperboloid structure of Brasília Cathedral, the National Congress, the National Theatre and the Palace of Justice are just some of the 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 to have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. A few years earlier, this lover of concrete, abstract curves and gigantism had already proved his worth in Belo Horizonte, with 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 profound humanist, he was forced into exile in 1965 by the dictatorship and took refuge in France, where he designed, among other things, the headquarters of the French Communist Party on Place du Colonel Fabien in Paris. It was not until 1985 that he finally returned to Brazil to continue his work. In 1996, on the eve of his 100th birthday, Oscar Niemeyer built the superb Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Niterói. An extraordinary building, emblematic of Brazil, this futuristic flying saucer of raw, white-painted concrete dominates Guanabara Bay, opposite Rio de Janeiro.
In Niterói, a city rarely visited by tourists, the Caminho Niemeyer allows visitors to discover 6 other buildings designed by the architect. Inaugurated in 2013, the Niemeyer Way is, after Brasilia, the Brazilian master's second-largest architectural ensemble. Several of his buildings can also be found in the Parque Ibirapuera in São Paulo.
Winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1988 at the age of 81, Oscar Niemeyer designed 600 buildings worldwide during his 70-year career. He died on December 5, 2012, on the eve of his 105th birthday, in his native Rio de Janeiro, on the vast Avenida Atlântica, in one of the buildings he designed.
