bromselick
8/25/2006 5:55:00 PM
The famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer denounced the
"hateful" blockade imposed to Cuba by the United States for 44
years, and considered that the Cuban Revolution is a paradigm for the
whole Latin America.
Niemeyer expressed that "the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel has been
an example for the whole Latin America; Fidel has proved that it is
necessary to react against the decadent capitalist system, which also
represents money and power".
The Cuban people "will resist all the provocations of the U.S.
imperialism", affirmed the architect, whose professional career is
more than 70 years and is the author of 600 projects all over the
world.
Born at the Brazilian city Rio de Janeiro, in 1907, he worked with Le
Corbusier in the innovating drafts for the Ministry of Health and
Education of Rio de Janeiro (1936), after graduating at the Brazil
University in 1935.
Among his works, the polemical San Francisco church with a very radical
structure stands out. The consecration of this work was postponed 16
years after it was completed in 1959. His international reputation is
due to his audacity and imagination.
Niemeyer's work has a very strong environmental nature, since he
tries to make buildings adapt to the conditions of the environment, by
making big structures with empty spaces in an unusual way.
Another feature of his buildings is that they rise on steel and
concrete. In the decade of 1950 he was the organizer architect of the
official buildings of the Brasilia city. From 1960 on he has worked in
his country and abroad, carrying out different architectonic works in
Germany, Great Britain, Italy or France, among others countries.
He has been awarded with the Pritzker prize (1988), the most
prestigious one among the ones given to architects, created in 1979 by
the North American Hyatt Foundation, and Asturias Prince Prize (1989).
This second prize is given by the Spanish Foundation named in the same
way, to a person, working group or institution with a creation or
investigation work that represents an important contribution to enrich
the common language of the Hispanic peoples and their cultural
background.
Niemeyer also received in 2004, the distinguished Praemium Imperiale,
created by the Japan Art Association, which recognizes annually, the
contributions of artists of every country of the world, in the fields
of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theater and cinema.