Number six - Casa França Brasil

Since every experience counts - here is another one from today! From the cultural heart of downtown Rio de Janeiro, there is yet another Centro Cultural that everyone who loves culture, architecture and the arts should absolutely visit: Casa França Brasil.

The building from 1820 was designed by Grandjean de Montigny and was the first example of neo-classical architecture in Rio de Janeiro. The building had many different uses among them customs offices, deposit of archives and a court house before it was restored and transformed into a Cultural Center in 1990. It is especially dedicated to contemporary art.

The building is wonderful, and with the exhibit showing a work by Rodrigo Braga called Tombo, where trunks of palm trees from Rio de Janeiro are spread around the floor, the contrast of the building and the artwork is startling.

After so many impressions I sat for a while and just relished the silence and the beauty of the building. Then on my way out I caught sight of Igreja de Candelaria, at two totally new angles.

And I remembered that it was Sunday and that I was blessed.

Number five - Centro Cultural Correios

Over the last years many public buildings in downtown Rio de Janeiro  have been transformed into Cultural Centers. Many of them are incredibly beautiful and after careful restoration they stand out as privileged showcases for art exhibitions.

Today I was headed for Centro Cultural Correios, it is situated at Rua Visc. de Itaboraí 20, in the heart of what has become a cultural triangle where you will also find the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and Centro Cultural Casa França Brasil.

As always downtown Rio de Janeiro seduced me. On a Sunday when there is hardly any traffic and not many people on the streets, you see a very different downtown. I decided to take the metro, so that I could take a look at Avenida Rio Branco, it looks, as could be expected, like a building site:

Rio de Janeiro is going through an ambitious transformation these days. Downtown the Mayor has promised us the VLT or Light Rail, a modern version of the old Streetcar, and ground is being opened up to put down the rails.

I walked on through empty streets, admiring the old buildings:

There were very few people around, but I found a solitary painter:

Then I got to my destination: Centro Cultural Correios, which as the name says used to be the headquarters of the Brazilian Postal Services:

I was especially interested in a Norwegian Art exhibit which was there, but I also discovered two other beautiful exhibits:

I took the antique panoramic elevator with the capacity of four people to the third floor and started there. The Norwegian Exhibit is of graphic art and it is in fact very beautiful.

The star of the exhibition is a print by the great Edvard Munch - The Kiss.

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But there are many well-known Norwegian artists and the exhibition is varied and interesting.

After the somewhat cold Nordic art, I went on to see the exhibition of the Brazilian impressionist Manoel Santiago. Although new to me, it was love at first sight! Fantastic colors, flowers, butterflies and Brazilian landscapes who could ask for more?

Manoel Santiago (1897- 1987) was born in the Amazon, but he lived and worked most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. He was a pioneer of impressionism in Brazil, and I felt blessed to have made his acquaintance on a Sunday afternoon.

On the second floor I found the exhibition most of the other visitors had come for:

The Exhibition of the work of Debret and his incredible drawings and watercolors of Rio de Janeiro. The French artist is well-known and loved in Brazil, his many observations of daily life in Rio de Janeiro between 1816 and 1831 have illustrated history books and have been used for research. I was surprised, though, at how small many of the pictures were, there were even magnifying glasses at hand for the public so that they could study the details.

 

These are just a few examples, but the exhibition is big, there are 120 works. Debret painted the rich and the poor, the masters and the slaves, landscapes, houses and palaces -all of it exotic and enchanting. And I felt happy to have seen the work of another foreigner in love with Rio de Janeiro.

Number four - Arte Sesc and Graciliano Ramos

Already I can see that it will be tough to make my goal of fifty new adventures before turning fifty! But every new adventure counts and there are still a number of attractions to explore in my own neighborhood, Flamengo! So I set out on a Sunday stroll to discover Arte Sesc wich is literally just around the corner...

Hidden behind green trees and a little lost between the tall apartment buildings it was easy to find on Rua Marques de Abrantes 99. As I entered the well kept little garden I wondered why I had never noticed the building before.

It turned out that the building from 1912, designed by the architect Gustavo Adolphsson to be the home of the Figner Family, had been closed for the public for a number of years. It has now been reopened, and to celebrate the 450 years of Rio de Janeiro it reopened with an exhibition featuring the life and the writing of the Brazilian author Graciliano Ramos.

A very long time ago I read Graciliano Ramos' book "Vidas secas" ( Barren Lives) from 1938, so I walked happily up the stairs. As always, though, I just had to stop to admire some of the details of the little palace of a house. The entrance door was spectacular:

And beside it were the most beautiful tiles:

And so even before I entered I was happy! The exhibition turned out to be very worthwhile, Graciliano Ramos, I discovered, wrote "Vidas Secas" while living in Rio de Janeiro, just down the road at Catete. 

He wrote essays about the Rio de Janeiro of his time, and I was delighted to see that some things never change...while others do...here is a picture of Largo de Alencar at the time Graciliano lived close by:

It has changed so much that I could not quite place the streets around it, and this is just down the road.

Graciliano Ramos was in prison for a while, at Ilha Grande, accused of being a communist. After he got out he was received by the Minister of Education and a friend of his commented: "What is good about this country is this: a little while ago you were in jail, just now you were received by the Minister of Education without having an appointment." To which Graciliano replied: "That is true, but don't forget that the inverse is also true. You can be here to see the Minister and a few hours later you can be put in jail. That is the real Brazil."

The exhibition showed how politically active Graciliano Ramos was and how critical he was of the situation of the poor in Brazil. 

His book "Barren Lives", that I read so many years ago, is about poor peasants suffering with the drought in the north of Brazil. What I remember best from the book, though, is the story of Baleia, the poor family's dog. The dog has a dream, and the fact that it did, and what it dreamed about I never forgot. At the exhibition I learned that the chapter containing Baleia's dream was the first the author wrote, he then spun the book around that chapter. 

As I walked out of Arte Sesc I decided to finally read a book by Graciliano Ramos that I have had in my bookshelf for a while: "Anguish" from 1936, said to be the book Graciliano Ramos himself thought his best. And so, one adventure leads to the next...

Number Three - A birthday present

The visit to São Cristovão was postponed but not forgotten! As some of you may know Imperial de São Cristovão used to be a very posh and noble address. After King John VI of Portugal moved there in 1810 and made Quinta da Boa Vista his official residence, the local aristocracy moved to the neighborhood.

During the reign of Pedro the II the neighborhood was modernized and industries installed.After Pedro the II of Brazil was deposed by a military coup on November 15 in 1889, his palace, Quinta da Boa Vista, became a museum. The elite moved on to the new neighborhoods of Botafogo and Copacabana and São Cristovão became a place of industries and migrants.

Right now, with prices of renting office space in Rio de Janeiro at an all time high, many companies are rediscovering São Cristovão, and moving there. In some of the old warehouses, several companies share the space, and they offer an interesting option for those shopping for bargains or just for something different.

I set out with a special place in mind: M2V:
http://www.m2vcomercial.com.br/Old/?page_id=90
They are located close to Quinta da boa Vista, and are open for anybody to visit, but you have to set up an appointment. And so I did! They represent several different European designers and it was not difficult to find a birthday present! Although the best present was the experience...

Number two - a visit to Quinta da Boa Vista

Actually number two was supposed to be a visit to São Cristovão to check out one of the many stores that have moved there. But sometimes a detour turns out better than what you had in mind...It was Saturday before Easter and all the stores were closed, so we ended up at Quinta da Boa Vista instead.

Quinta da Boa Vista used to be the residence of the Emperors of Brazil in the 19th century. Nowadays, what used to be the gardens of the São Cristovão Palace is a public park. The Palace is now the National Museum, with a curious collection on natural history, ethnology and archaeology. I have visited the Museum on several occasions and always enjoy the mixture of stuffed Brazilian animals, strange insects and even an ancient Egyptian mummy - said to have been a princess.

In the park you can also find the Zoo of Rio de Janeiro. It is very popular, but I confess that it makes me a little sad, it is an old zoo, and the animals do not have much space. This day, however, we opted for not visiting the museum nor the zoo. We just enjoyed the park. And that is what a lot of people from the Northern Zone of the city were also doing. The park is enormous, with lots of big old trees, lawns were you can lay down, have a picnic or play, and a  lake complete with pedalos. There are sales people offering cotton candy, balloons, kites, balls and of course water, sodas and ice cream. There is even a little train that goes around the park, in a way it was a trip down memory lane. It is an old fashioned park, just like a park should be...it ended up being a wonderful afternoon. And I decided that I should go there more often and maybe bring a packed lunch and a book.