Niemeyer, Oscar

The early years

Born December 15, 1907 in Rio de Janeiro in a wealthy family of Portuguese - German descent on the street, which was later named after his grandfather Ribeiro de Almeida. He was brought up in the house of his mother's parents.

In his youth he led a careless bohemian lifestyle, was fond of football and books (he read a lot, but haphazardly ^[8] ), at the age of 21 he dropped out to marry Annite Baldo, daughter of Italian immigrants from Venice, who brought him his only daughter Anna Maria Niemeyer .

He studied at a privileged college, where he first showed interest in architecture. When asked how he became an architect, he later answered: “By chance. I drew something in the air with a finger, they noticed it and decided at the family council that they would give me an art education. ”

1930s: Becoming an Architect

Since 1932 he worked under the direction of Lucio Costa and Carlos Leao. In 1934 he graduated from the National Architectural School in Rio de Janeiro , after which he first worked in his father's publishing house. However, he continued to work in the architectural studio of Lucio Costa, Carlos Leao and Gregory Warsawczyk . The first completed construction of Niemeyer was a nursery in Rio de Janeiro (1937).

In the second half of the 1930s, the Brazilian national school of modern architecture began to take shape in Brazil. Her first work was the building of the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro (1937-1943). The project manager was Lucio Costa; Le Corbusier himself was attracted to him as an adviser. After Le Corbusier's departure, the latest changes made to his plan by Niemeyer impressed Costa so much that since 1939 it was Niemeyer who led the development of the project.

In 1939, Costa and Niemeyer built the Brazil pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York . In 1940, Niemeyer met with Juscelino Kubitschek - at that time the mayor of Belo Horizonte .

1940-1950s: International Recognition and Communist Views

The 1940s is a time of growing creative activity of Niemeyer. According to his projects, a hotel was built in Ouro Preto (1940), a restaurant, a yacht club, a casino, a hotel and a church of St. Francis of Assisi in Pampulha (1942-1943); Boa Vista Bank (1946) in Rio de Janeiro; Training Aviation and Technical Center in São José dos Campos (1947-1953). In 1947, Niemeyer took part in the design of the United Nations headquarters building in New York.

He was sympathetic to the USSR in World War II . In 1945, Niemeyer joined the Brazilian Communist Party . When the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Luis Carlos Prestes and fifteen of his associates were released from prison, Niemeyer sheltered them at home, eventually donating the house he built for the needs of the party.

In 1954, he founded the Modulo magazine of architecture and fine arts with like-minded people, around which representatives of the Brazilian left intelligentsia grouped (closed after the 1964 coup, resumed in 1975). From his political convictions, Niemeyer also derived his desire to find solutions for social problems in architecture, including the housing crisis, unsanitary conditions and terrible living conditions in favelas ; however, in his opinion, only social reforms and a socialist political base could bring comfort and freedom for all.

Due to his political views, Niemeyer was difficult to enter the United States during the years of the post-war anti-communist hysteria : he was denied a visa both in 1946, when he was invited to teach at Yale University , and in 1953, when he was appointed dean at the School of Design at Harvard, and in 1966, when he needed a transit visa through the United States.

The buildings of the 1950s include Niemeyer’s own house in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro Canoa (1953), the South America Hospital in Rio de Janeiro (1952-1959), the Niemeyer Tower residential building (1954) and the residential complex them. Kubitschek (1951-1962) in Belo Horizonte, the building of the confectionery factory (1950), the Montreal business center (1950), the Eiffel (1955) and Kopan residential buildings (1951-1965), the international exhibition complex ( 1951-1954) in Sao Paulo . Of the large unrealized projects of this time, it should be noted the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas (1955), designed in the form of an inverted tetrahedral pyramid.

1957-1964: The New Capital - Brasilia

Since 1957, Niemeyer, according to the master plan of Lucio Costa, has been building up the future new capital - the city of Brasilia , which began to be built on the initiative and invitation of Juscelin Kubitschek , who became President of Brazil in 1956 and shortly after the inauguration of Niemeyer (the capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro in Brasilia in 1960). The expressiveness of this development is achieved by contrasting the unusual in forms (domed, pyramidal, cup-shaped volumes, arrow-shaped columns) structures of the government center and emphasized strict geometric shapes of residential complexes.

The Presidential Palace Alvorada (1958), the Palace Hotel (1958), the Palace of Government Planalto (1960), the Palace of the Supreme Court (1960), the Palace of the National Congress (1960), and the corps of ministries ( 1960), the Cathedral (1960-1970), the theater (1962), the Nacional Hotel (1962), the hospital (1962), the Palace of Justice (1970), the Ministry of Defense (1974), the residence of the Vice President (1974).

Niemeyer architecture is distinguished by plasticity, expressiveness and warmth. He was one of the first to see and realize the artistic possibilities of monolithic reinforced concrete . Despite the sharpness and unusualness, Niemeyer’s projects have always been elaborated in detail, functionally and constructively justified, often communicating functions to an unexpected, but very rational embodiment. Niemeyer constantly strives to enrich the architectural form - to plastic and contrasting comparisons of volumes, to the dynamism of articulations, to the development of surface textures, to the introduction of color, and also to the inclusion of works of related art in the architectural composition.

1964-1985: Military dictatorship and forced emigration

Returning from Israel in 1964, where, at the invitation of Mayor of Haifa, Abba Husi, he planned the campus of the University of Haifa , Niemeyer found Brazil different - a military coup against President Juan Goulart took place . During the military dictatorship, Niemeyer lived in exile in France (1964-1985), visiting Brazil with only short visits; however, the construction of public buildings in Brasilia continues according to his projects. He also spent some of his time in the USSR and Cuba.

During this period, he designs and builds a number of public buildings in Ghana , Lebanon , Italy , Algeria , Portugal , France (the headquarters of the French Communist Party ; the labor exchange in Bobigny, planned as the building of the General Confederation of Labor ; House of Culture in Le Havre; House of Government of the company Renault). In Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer is building the Manshet Publishing House (1967), the Nacional Hotel (1971), the Saens Pena Metro Station (1979), and the Carnival Center (1983-1984); in Brasilia - the President Kubitschek Memorial (1980), the Pantheon (1985) and the Latin America Memorial (1987). Exhibitions of his works are held in many foreign countries: in 1977 in Moscow (the first in 1956), in 1979 at the National Center for Arts and Culture of Georges Pompidou in Paris, in 1983 at the UN headquarters in New York.

In 1978, he headed the non-governmental organization Center-Democratic Brazil (CEBRADE), which brought together the intelligentsia, trade union and political figures opposed to the military regime.

1985-2012: The later years. Centennial centenary

The military dictatorship in Brazil ended in 1985, and Niemeyer returned to his homeland. From 1992 to 1996, he was the chairman of the Brazilian Communist Party , leading its orthodox- Marxist wing, which did not agree with the transformation of the Communist Party into the Socialist People's Party of Brazil in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR. Having achieved the re-registration of the party, he moved away from its leadership. His friend Fidel Castro joked: “Niemeyer and I are the last communists on this planet” ^[9] .

In 1996, at the age of 89, Niemeyer built the Museum of Modern Art in Niterói . In the 2000s, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba (2002), the Ibirapuera audience in São Paulo (2002, the 1951 project), the National Museum and the National Library in Brasilia (2006; the 1958 projects) were built according to Niemeyer's projects. , Oscar Niemeyer cultural center in Goiania (2006), Cabo Branco building in João Pessoa (2008). In 2011, the Oscar Niemeyer Cultural Center was opened in the Spanish city of Aviles , named after the author of the project.

Honorary member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1983) and foreign honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts ^[10] . On the eve of Niemeyer’s centenary, Vladimir Putin signed a decree awarding the architect the Order of Friendship “for his great contribution to the development of Russian-Brazilian relations” ^[11] .

Publishers of Soviet and Russian encyclopedic dictionaries more than once "buried" Oscar Niemeyer. So, in the "First Biographical Big Encyclopedic Dictionary" (Moscow-St. Petersburg, NORINT, 2007), the date of the architect’s death is 1989.

In fact, Oscar Niemeyer died in Rio de Janeiro on December 5, 2012, only 10 days before his 105th birthday ^[12] . A month earlier, on November 2, 2012, Oscar Niemeyer was hospitalized with renal failure, which became a complication after the flu.

Niemeyer is an architectural theorist; author of the books “My Experience in Building Brasilia” (1961), “Almost Memories. Traveling ”(1968),“ Architecture and Society ”, etc. Russian translations:

• Niemeyer O. My experience in building Brasilia. M .: Publishing house of foreign literature, 1963.
• Niemeyer O. Architecture and Society. M .: Progress, 1975.

• Hight V.L. , Yanitsky O.N. Oscar Niemeyer. - M.: Stroyizdat , 1986 (Series: Masters of Architecture). - 208 p.

• Fundação Oscar Niemeyer
• The article "Oscar Niemeyer" on the site "Architecture. Building. Design"
• Interview with Oscar Niemeyer “He Built the United Nations” in the magazine “Architect”
• Website Gallery of Oscar Niemeyer Buildings
• description of the buildings of Oscar Niemeyer and photographs of the city in archinews.ru magazine