Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer gave modernism curving forms inspired by Brazil’s mountains, rivers and women’s bodies. He designed almost all the major buildings in the new capital Brasília and worked until he was over a hundred.
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born in 1907 in Rio de Janeiro. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rio and began working for Lúcio Costa, the leader of modernism in Brazil. When Le Corbusier came to Rio in 1936 as consultant for a new Ministry of Education building, Niemeyer worked in the team, and it became his school. He made his breakthrough with buildings at Pampulha outside Belo Horizonte in the 1940s, commissioned by the young mayor Juscelino Kubitschek.
At Pampulha he designed, among other things, the church of São Francisco de Assis, with concrete vaults that undulate like waves. He was one of the designers of the United Nations headquarters in New York. When Kubitschek became president he decided to build Brasília, and Niemeyer designed the presidential palace, the National Congress, the cathedral and the ministries, while Costa made the city plan. The city was inaugurated in 1960. He was a communist and went into exile in Paris during the military dictatorship, where he designed the headquarters of the French Communist Party. Later works include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói, which looks like a bowl on a cliff.
Niemeyer received the Pritzker Prize in 1988. He worked until his death in 2012, a few days before his 105th birthday. He said he was not attracted by the right angle but by the free and sensual curve. His architecture became a symbol of Brazilian modernity, and his curving concrete forms have influenced architects all over the world. He has also been criticised because Brasília became a city built for cars and monumental views rather than for people.