Modernos 10
Collective exhibition that inaugurates the Instituto Casa Roberto Merinho, the cultural space that holds the art collection of publisher and businessman Roberto Pisani Marinho (Rio de Janeiro, 1904 2003), owner of media conglomerate Grupo Globo. The collecton comprises works of ten of the greatest names of Brazilian Modernism from the 1930's and 1940's. The Instutute is kept in his former house in Coseme Velho and was inspired by those of the of the sugar plantation big house known as Solar de Megaípe, in the state of Pernambuco. In 1938, modernism was still not fully fledged in Brazil. The reference to the Brazilian colonial era was an innovative counterpoint to the then prevailing trend in Rio de Janeiro of designing houses inspired by past European styles. Landscape desgin of grounds originally was by Burle Marx. "Two important steps were taken by Roberto Marinho in 1939: the construction of his house in Rio de Janeiro's district of Cosme Velho and the beginning of his art collection, which since the outset was specialized in Brazilian modernism. House and collection were born wrapped in the desire to construct a uniquely Brazilian architectural and artistic language. The features of the residence's neocolonial architecture were inspired by an image of the famed historical manor house known as Solar de Megaípe, in Pernambuco, thus alluding to the nation's past - a novel gesture during the pre-modernist era in Rio de Janeiro, when the eclectic style of European inspiration prevailed here in the design of private residences. [...] Since the beginning, the art collection contained works by painters who were the young journalist's contemporaries, who took Brazil as their theme, language and driving force. They thus sought to exorcise the disenchantment of the Brazilian." --Page 9.
