Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho

Architect

Biography

Oscar Niemeyer (, December 15 1907 – December 5 2012) was an architect, of the Brazilian Modern Movement..

He was born in Rio de Janeiro to a wealthy family: his father owned a printing press and his brother later became a doctor of international renown. He owes his German surname, by which he would later be known, to his grandmother, a Brazilian of Hanoverian descent..

In 1928 he married Anita Baldo. He graduated from Barnabitas College and 1930 in 1930 he entered the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (National School of Fine Arts) to study architecture.In 1934 his daughter Anna Maria was born. Before finishing school he joined the office of Lucio Costa, one of the founders of the Modern Movement in Brazil, as an apprentice. His work has nothing special to show until 1936. Then he meets Le Corbusier, who comes as a consultant for the building of the Ministry of Education that had taken over Costa’s office. It is an acquaintance that will have a profound effect on him and change him completely. He begins to design his own projects and in 1939, with Lucio Costa’s retirement, he takes over the building of the Ministry of Education. He does a multitude of projects many of which are assigned to him by the heads of the municipalities to design open space and building complexes in order to beautify their cities and strengthen the local spirit. In 1964 there was a coup d’état and Niemeyer, as a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), left the country. He settles in Paris, where he opens an office and spends time in Cuba and the Soviet Union. In 1985, democracy was restored in Brazil and Niemeyer returned home. He is honoured with the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988. From 1992 to 1996 he served as president of the Communist Party. Oscar Niemeyer did not stop working until the end of his life. His work has something unique to show. A continuous and uninterrupted development of his artistic abilities. There is no sudden change or sudden emergence of a new trend. The same characteristics that were present in his early work stand out in his latest works. A multiplicity of types, sizes and types of architectural spaces with specific characteristics that encapsulate the ideas of the Brazilian Modern movement.

“The plasticity and diversity of Brazil’s landscapes, a climate that requires the least possible technological assistance, a way of life based on the present more than on the ambiguous flow of events, and a people with rich emotions become lyrical poetry in their externalization while in their internalization they bend towards archetypes. These may explain some facts of the flourishing of the new Brazilian architecture.”