The Itamaraty Palace - Foreign Relations Ministry, spiral stairs, Brasilia
Vincent Fournier French, born Burkina Faso
Not on view
This photograph by French artist Vincent Fournier portrays the sculptural poured-concrete helix staircase in the hall of the Itamaraty Palace, which hosts the Ministry of International Affairs and was designed, along with the greater part of the city of Brasilia, by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. At the top right, on the concrete mezzanine, a geometric metal sculpture by the Brazilian artist Franz Weissmann (1911-2005) offers some visual juxtaposition to the staircase’s elegant curvature.
Fournier’s compositions capture the experience of viewing twentieth century architecture from a twenty-first century perspective, presenting the city as a stage where fiction mixes with reality. This image shows nostalgia for a modernist temple fossilized in a utopian future which did not take place.
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