Color and artistic expression through architectural ceramics in the last stage of Oscar Niemeyer’s work

Abstract

The extensive professional career of Oscar Niemeyer shows, in its last stage, a compositional reiteration that developed the pattern set by emblematic works as the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, the project that initiated the architect’s journey through formal sinuosity. The intent with which Niemeyer used ceramic coatings at the beginning of his career range from the visual dematerialization of the enclosures, reinforcing the compositional reading to the vindication of Brazilian tradition and culture in the context of the Modern Movement, offering a certain singularity to the building. These intentions were reexamined in his latest
works, in which Niemeyer’s constant desire to integrate different cultural manifestations into the project through
collaboration with various designers, in order to reinforce the symbolic role of the union of the arts, was oriented
to the deployment of his own creativity, understood as an author’s signature.