With the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Iberê Camargo Foundation, Porto Alegre boasts a state-of-the-art exhibition space and cultural center unrivaled anywhere in the country. “The building’s biggest contribution is to create a new paradigm,” said foundation Vice President Justo Werlang. “People will think differently now about museum spaces [in Brazil].”
The initiative should help Brazil overcome the poor reputation of its major exhibition spaces. The country still hasn’t really lived down a 1978 fire at the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art that destroyed an exhibition of works by the Uruguayan modernist Joaquín Torres-García. Then in December 2007 the country’s most celebrated institution, the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), suffered a major break-in, losing works by Picasso and Portinari (that were later recovered). The Iberê Camargo Foundation headquarters feature the latest answers to the problems of security, fireproofing illumination and acclimatization. Designed by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, the project’s model won the Venice Biennial of Architecture’s Gold Lion award in 2002. The curved outlines of Siza’s design were implemented with the use of reinforced concrete. And the building is the first in Brazil to be made entirely of white concrete. Landscaping chores were handed off to a local environmental group, the Gaia Foundation, which planted a native forest on the 1,600 square meter ground behind the building.
The new headquarters will help preserve the memory of Camargo and promote contemporary art. Three floors of the five-storey building will be reserved for exhibition spaces, divided into nine rooms with a total area of 938 square meters. After an inaugural show exclusively featuring highlights from Camargo’s 4,200 piece private collection, two floors will be used for temporary exhibitions, with one reserved for the late master’s work.
Less well-known internationally than some of Brazilian contemporizes like Lygia Clark, Camargo, who died in 1994 at the age of 79, represented a key figure in the 20th century Brazilian art world. “Without exaggeration, I believe, Iberê Camago’s work personifies modern painting in Brazil,” once wrote critic Ronaldo Brito. Camargo ranked 10th among the most important Brazilian artists and architects of the century in a poll of experts by the newsmagazine Isto É. His relative lack of recognition abroad may be related to his independence from ephemeral trends. “Stubbornly resisting short-lived fashions, careful about protecting his individualism, he knows how to resist the simple inflows of all tides,” once noted other critic, Roberto Pontual.
Already home of the successful Mercosul Biennial, celebrating the art of South America’s Southern Cone, 1.5 million-strong Porto Alegre is the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul in the extreme south of Brazil. The Iberê Camargo Foundation offers further proof of the growing strength of the Brazilian art scene outside the traditional São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro axis. “The territorial scope of the foundation isn’t Porto Alegre or even Rio Grande do Sul,” said Werlang. “It has to be Brazil. We want to generate cultural production that will please the entire country.”
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