34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
To Swoop, Soar and Surprise (Oscar Niemeyer), 2013
WALL SCULPTURE
mixed media
50 x 43 x 9 in
127 x 109 x 23 cm
Cast glass, sandblasted carved glass, bronze and wood.
Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian architect, produced a prestigious body of work over a career that spanned almost 80 years. His first international acclaim came in 1943 from the design of the Pampulha Architectural Complex that consisted of a church, a casino, restaurant, golf course and yacht club at the behest of Juscelino Kubitcheck, the mayor of Bela Horizonte.
In 1956, Kubitcheck had now become president of Brazil and had a vision to build a new capital in the center of the country far away from other major cities, Brasilia. Niemeyer was invited to design the major civic buildings. Six buildings including the National Congress, the Cathedral, the cultural complex, and the Supreme Court were all completed before 1960. Over the years, in total, he designed 28 buildings in the capital city, including the Brasilia Digital Television Tower completed in 2012. Some of his other well-known projects were the United Nations Headquarters in New York (in collaboration with Le Corbusier), the campus of the University of Haifa in Israel, the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Brazil Pavilion at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair in collaboration with Lùcio Costa. For the city of Brasilia, Costa did the overall plan of the city and Niemeyer did the buildings.
From 1964 to 1985, during the military dictatorship in Brazil, Niemeyer worked in exile in Paris due to his very strong political views. In 1988 after having earlier moved back to Brazil with its return to democracy, Niemeyer was the recipient of the Pritzker Prize, the most important award in the world of architecture. He continued to work extensively right up until his death in December of 2012 at the age of 104.
My sculpture “To Swoop, soar, and Surprise” attempts to relate the philosophy of its subject. Niemeyer said, “Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple”. “What attracts me are free and sensual curves, the curves in my country’s mountains, in the sinuous flow of its rivers, and in the body of its beloved women”. He took inspiration in the female form and drew frequently from models incorporating aspects of these drawings into his buildings. To tell his story, I have used the white glass to represent the white reinforced concrete so prevalent in his sculptural buildings. Details of several buildings including Centro Niemeyer in Avilés, Spain, the National Congress, in Brasilia, the beautiful arching lines of the Cultural Complex. Neimeyer is inspecting his work and and in another context the profiles of 13 of his buildings as seen in the small bronzes at the center of the piece. These are from a typeface invented by two young Brazilian graphic designers based on the buildings of Oscar Niemeyer and called Utopia Niemeyer.
