AKN Salutes The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) in Rio de Janeiro ~ Brazil’s National Art Museum

Written by Juanita Solerno Tuesday, 13 March 2012 22:46

Rio de Janeiro - The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes ( MNBA , Portuguese for National Museum of Fine Arts ) is the national art museum of Brazil, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The museum, officially established in 1937 by the education minister Gustavo Capanema, was inaugurated in 1938, by president Getúlio Vargas. The museum collection however, originated much earlier, in 1808. Fleeing Napoleon’s invasion and the wars being fought on the Iberian Peninsula, the Portugese Royal Court transferred to Brazil. King John VI brought part of the Portuguese Royal art collection with him, and much of it remained after the King's return to Europe. This collection became the core collection of the National School of Fine Arts. The collection was later enlarged by Joachim Lebreton, a French artist who led the French Artistic Mission that came to Brazil in 1816 to help organize the arts in the country. The French Artistic Mission was charged by John VI to organize the Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts in Rio de Janeiro. Its first building, designed by French Neoclassical architect Grandjean de Montigny, was inaugurated in 1826, when the school was renamed the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. In the following decades, the Academy expanded their collection, gathering an important collection of paintings and forming a glyptotheque. After the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, the Imperial Academy was renamed Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (National School of Fine Arts). In the early 1900s, the center of Rio de Janeiro was extensively remodeled and between 1906 and 1908, a new building was constructed for the National School of Fine Arts in the Central Avenue (now Avenida Rio Branco), very close to the new main square of the city (the Cinelândia). The style of the new building, designed by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos, was clearly inspired by the Louvre Museum in Paris.



But during the construction the project was modified, possibly by Rodolfo Bernardelli and, later, by Archimedes Memoria. As a result, the building presents an eclectic design, with facades modeled after different styles. In 1931, the school was incorporated by the University of Rio de Janeiro. When the museum was created in 1937, it became the heir not only to the National School collection, but also to its building. Starting in the 1940s, the school’s activities were slowly moved out, the process being completed in 1975. At that time the collection was split, with some works being transferred to the Ilha do Fundão campus, serving as core collection of the university's Museu Dom João VI. In the mid-1990s, the Fundação Nacional de Artes was transferred to another location and the museum was finally able to occupy the whole building. Currently, the museum has 6,800 square meters of exhibition area and 1,800 square meters of storage. In addition to the exhibition areas and technical/administrative rooms, the museum contains a large library as well as conservation and restoration facilities. The MNBA is one of the most important cultural institutions of the country, as well as the most important museum of Brazilian art, particularly rich in its collection of 19th century paintings and sculptures. In the 1980s structural problems were detected in the building, and since then the museum has been undergoing a rolling schedule of repair and refurbishment works which have reduced the museum’s capacity for temporary exhibitions, limiting the museum to a few small scale temporary exhibitions and larger scale rolling presentations of the permanent collection.

The MNBA’s collection consists of approximately 20,000 items, including painting, sculpture, drawing as well as decorative arts, furniture, folk art and African art. The MNBA’s collection of works by Brazilian artists is particularly impressive. Nineteenth century artists represented include Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, Jean-Baptiste Debret, Félix Taunay, Victor Meirelles (more than 150 works, including “The First Mass in Brazil” and “Battle of Guararapes”), Pedro Américo (“Battle of Avaí”, “Moses and Jochebed”, etc.), Almeida Júnior (“Countrymen stalking”, “The Brazilian Lumberjack”, etc.), Manuel de Araújo Porto-alegre, Pedro Weingärtner, Rodolfo Amoedo, Zeferino da Costa, Henrique Bernardelli, Eliseu Visconti, Castagneto, Hipólito Caron, Antônio Parreiras, and many others. Although the 19th Century painting collection is particularly strong concerning, there are also significant paintings from the earlier Colonial period, such as works by Manuel da Cunha, Leandro Joaquim and Manuel Dias de Oliveira. The modern section includes a good selection of paintings by artists closely related to the Modern Art Week (Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, etc.) and a more representative collection of modernist painters active in the 1930s and on (Cândido Portinari, Djanira, Guignard , Cícero Dias, Alfredo Volpi, Maria Leontina, Ivan Serpa, Iberê Camargo, etc.). Among the contemporary works, the collection includes Hélio Oiticica, Paulo Pasta and Eduardo Sued. Rodolfo Bernardelli is the best represented sculptor with more than 250 works in the collection, alongside pieces by Marc Ferrez, Chaves Pinheiro, Almeida Reis, Correia Lima, Celso Antônio de Menezes, Franz Weissmann, Amílcar de Castro, Rubem Valentim, Sergio de Camargo and Farnese de Andrade.



The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes has one of the most important collections of engravings in the country, an assemblage of works which is able to provide a remarkable panorama of the historical development of print technique in Brazil. The collection of prints is permanently available to consult by researchers, artists and general public in the "Gabinete de Gravuras" (prints cabinet) and is presented in revolving exhibitions at the Carlos Oswald Room. The section of Brazilian drawings of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes contains about 4,000 works, being one of the largest collections of the institution. It includes works on pencil, pen, ink, crayon, watercolor, chalk, and other techniques, either produced as sketches or as independent artworks. The museum collection of Brazilian folk art consists of 442 works, attesting to the ethnological aspects of the regional societies of Brazil. The collection includes works of both functional and artistic nature. The museum’s collection of African art is composed by wood carvings, masks, ceremonial objects, functional objects, ivory and bronze sculptures, textiles, body ornaments, and other items related to several ethnic groups, most part of which indigenous to Western Africa, more specifically, to the Bight of Benin.

The collection of international paintings at the MNBA is today one of the most representative among South American museums. A major part of the collection is composed by European paintings, mainly French, but including significant Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Flemish school works, alongside Latin American, Canadian and the US artists. The collection of Italian paintings includes works by Bartolomeo Passarotti, Luca Cambiaso, Gioacchino Assereto, Giovanni Lanfranco, Il Raffaellino, Francesco Albani, Antonio Maria Vassallo, Luciano Borzone, Simone Cantarini, Valerio Castello, Jacopo Vignali, Grechetto, Giambattista Langetti, Ciro Ferri, Francesco Cozza, Baciccio, Corrado Giaquinto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo and Alessandro Magnasco. The nucleus of French paintings is mainly composed by 18th and 19th century artworks. It comprises, aside from the painters of the French Artistic Mission, names such as Jacques Courtois, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, François Bonvin, Théodule Ribot, Jules Breton, Jean-Paul Laurens, Constant Troyon, Jean-Jacques Henner, Jules Dupré, Gustave Doré , Henri Harpignies, Alfred Sisley , Armand Guillaumin , Edmond Aman-Jean and Henri Martin. Among the highlights of the collections is the group of 20 paintings by Eugène Boudin, one of the largest such ensembles outside France.



The collection of Dutch, Flemish and German paintings is mainly composed by works ranging from 15th to 17th century. It includes an important group of eight Brazilian landscapes by Dutch artist Frans Post, the first landscapist of the New World. The collection also includes paintings by Joos van Cleve, Hans von Kulmbach, Jan Dirksz Both, Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Abraham Brueghel, David Teniers the Younger, Daniel Seghers, Gerard ter Borch, David Beck, Jan Steen. Other European artists presented in the collection include Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Bernardo Germán de Llórente and Federico de Madrazo (Spanish), Francisco de Holanda, Silva Porto, António Pedro, Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro and José Malhoa (Portuguese), Emile Claus (Belgian), Árpád Szenes (Hungarian) and Carlos Schwabe (Swiss). Latin American painting is represented by a number of anonymous works of the Cuzco School and modern artists, such as the Argentinians Benito Quinquela Martín and Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós. Also representing the art of the Americas are the Canadians Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté and Paul Duff. The museum holds a small collection of international sculpture, including the Roman marble bust of Antinous, dating back to the 2nd century BC, as well as a Greek torso of a woman. The collection also includes three bronze busts by François Rude, Constantin Meunier's “The Harvester”, Auguste Rodin 's “Meditation without Arms”, and works by Antoine-Louis Barye and António Teixeira Lopes.

Several works in the collection are by foreign artists active in Brazil during the 19th century, such as the French brothers Marc and Zéphyrin Ferrez and the Italian Augusto Girardet. The collection also includes a number of bronze reductions produced by artistic-industrial companies, such as Barbedienne, and a didactic collection of plaster copies of ancient Greek and Roman statues. The museum owns approximately 2,000 examples of international prints representing a diversified and eclectic panorama of the history of engraving. Modern prints include works by Pablo Picasso , Joan Miró , Jacques Lipchitz , Marc Chagall , Wassily Kandinsky and Jacques Villon. Another highlight of the collection is the ensemble of more than one hundred 17th and 18th century Japanese woodcuts (ukiyo-e) by artists such as Utamaro and Hiroshige . The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes has a small but highly distinguished collection of international drawings, including 247 drawings by Grandjean de Montigny and other works by François Gérard, Honoré Daumier , Rosa Bonheur, Édouard Detaille, Henri-Edmond Cross and Jean-Louis Forain. Other European schools well represented in the collection include Italy (Bartolomeo Cesi, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Pompeo Batoni ), Portugal (Francisco de Holanda, Domingos Sequeira, Vieira Portuense, José Malhoa), Netherlands and Germany (Paulus Potter, Johann Moritz Rugendas), among others.



The MNBA hosts a regular programme of exhibitions. Currently, they have three exhibitions on view. "Monica Barki - Sensitive File" is a retrospective celebrating the artists 30 year career with 127 of her works on view. These cover all stages of her career, through drawings, studies with collage, prints, paintings, assemblages, photo essays and videos. This exhibition is on view through January 29th 2012. "1978 - Drawings, Claudio Teixeira Valerio" is on view until February 5th 2012 and feature the artist's updating of drawings originally designed for an exhibition held in 1978, during the military dictatorship. Many of the original drawings were lost and this exhibition recreates the original with 27 drawings of various sizes, inspired by this gloomy and troubled period in Brazilian history. The third exhibition currently on view features the works of the Guild of St. Francis. The Guild of St. Francis is a group of three artists - Celio Belem, Claudio Teixeira, and Valerian Eulalio Milton - who are also professional painting conservators and restorers. The group was formed in 2005, when they began to create the works that are now displayed at the MNBA. This collective of painters had its genesis from conversations in the studio, in Niterói, and an interest in creating joint works honoring the seventeenth-century painting, with special attention to the study of the technique applied by the artists of that era, and especially the works of Peter Paul Rubens. In the Netherlands the professional guilds of the seventeenth century were named according to their patrons - thus the Guild of St. Luke received this name in tribute to the patron saint of painters. In Niterói, the Guild of St. Francis was so named because the studio that hosts the collective work being located in the neighborhood of the same name. "The Guild of St. Francis" exhibition will remain on view through February 5th 2012.

Visit the museum’s website at … www.mnba.gov.br/

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~