RIO DE JANEIRO

Until 1961 the cosmopolitan city of Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Brazil. Throughout the twentieth century, the city changed drastically due to major urban projects. Flattened hills and coastal landfills produced an artificial geography in harmony with the exuberant natural landscape. Large social spaces, like new beaches and soccer stadiums, catered to residents’ sporty outdoor life. By the early 1960s, Rio was home to more than three million people and a cultural center of international significance. The modern architects who designed the city of Brasília—a showcase of democracy and progress that replaced Rio de Janeiro as the national capital—were from Rio. Rio was also the great laboratory of Brazilian music. The new urban genre of bossa nova—emerging in the late 1950s and combining elements from the Afro-Brazilian tradition, cool jazz, and bebop—came to symbolize a sophisticated, relaxed tropical lifestyle.

At the other end of the spectrum, the filmmakers who launched the Cinema Novo [New Cinema] movement in the early 1960s focused on poverty, alienation, and social discrimination. Rio also gave birth to Neo-Concrete art in the late 1950s. Artists Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Hélio Oiticica challenged Concrete Art’s stark and rationalist geometry. Using geometric forms, they created innovative works that invited spectator participation, involving all the senses. They sought to fulfill the avant-garde dream of integrating art and life, specifically with Rio’s complex, sensuous, and charged atmosphere.