This article by Vera Pacheco Jordão questions the procedures followed at the Congresso Internacional de Críticos de Arte in 1959, a publicly funded event that brought foreign guests working in the cultural sphere to Brazil. The author condemns the failure to include specialists in the fields of economics and the social sciences who might have had specific suggestions regarding the construction of Brasilia, the country’s new capital. Pacheco Jordão argues that by focusing on urbanism and aesthetics the congress downplayed the economic situation facing the country. She openly opposes architect Oscar Niemeyer’s speech insofar as, for the sake of a utopia with no social classes, he proposed a habitational unit for public employees (a project shown to international critics) where the kitchen gets no direct light and the quarters for domestic workers are too small. Pacheco Jordão supports Charlotte Perriand’s position, expressed at the congress, that the urban habitat should take precedence over the monumentality of the urban design. She also cites the fallacies of the project pointed out by Italian theorist Bruno Zevi, who described it as military in its rigor and cut off from its context; he accused the project of gigantism and architectural deceit, in other words, it consisted of disconnected concrete structures covered in marble. Another participant in the congress, Israeli Haim Ganz, called the project “a Kafkian city.”

The Congresso Internacional Extraordinário de Críticos de Arte (CIECA) took place in Brasilia, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro from September 17 to September 25, 1959. The theme of the event—“A cidade nova, síntese das artes”—was proposed by critic Mário Pedrosa who presided over its inauguration and closing. The lectures of the foreign critics and architects who participated in the congress generated important debates on the production of art and architecture in Brazil.

Writer and journalist Vera Pacheco Jordão (1910-80) was in charge of the visual arts column for Rio de Janeiro-based newspaper O Globo. This article on the CIECA was, by chance, the first text she wrote for that column; she would dedicate a total of seven articles to the event and its organizers, establishing, with her remarks and criticism, an antagonistic polemic in response to the congress’s “positive” vision. This first text in the series sums up the topics she would address in the following articles. 

For further reading on the CIECA, see Werner Haftmann’s “As artes maiores na cidade” (doc. no.1110405); Mário Pedrosa’s “A cidade nova, síntese das artes” (doc. no. 1086503) and “Lições do congresso internacional dos críticos” (doc. no. 1086667); and Lucio Costa’s “A crise da arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110342).