Exhibition in Lisbon about the creation of Brasilia 62 years ago

An exhibition celebrating 62 years since the founding of Brasília, 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 commemorations of the Bicentennial of Brazilian Independence, the exhibition has already been in Paris, Berlin, London, and Rome, among 12 cities, and is entitled “Brasília – From Utopia to Capital”.

The exhibition, which will be open until October 30 at the Museu Nacional dos Coches with free admission, celebrates the 62nd anniversary of the Brazilian capital by showing 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 to the new phase of interiorization of the country’s public power, previously concentrated on the coast.

The exhibition 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 models of Lucio Costa’s urban plan, sculptures by Maria Martins, Bruno Giorgi, and Alfredo Ceschiatti, and photographs by Marcel Gautherot, Peter Scheier, Jean Manzon, and Mário Fontenelle.

The works come from Brazilian public and private collections, including the Moreira Salles Institute, the Public Archives 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 central-western part 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.

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 30,000 workers during construction, which lasted three years and ten months,” he further 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, and the public spaces, such as the City Park and the Itamaraty Palace, are some projects that can be seen in detail in this exhibition.

“Brasília – From utopia to the Capital” is a realization of Artetude Produções with the special participation of the Brasília Collection, support of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and institutional support of Casa da América Latina (“Latin America’s House”), União das Cidades capitais de Língua Portuguesa (“Union of Portuguese-speaking Capital Cities”), and the Brazilian Embassy in Lisbon.

With information from Agência Lusa