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São Paulo Southeast Region |
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| The Capital next | |||
 Pinheiros Marginal Founded in 1554 by the
Jesuit priests, São Paulo, by those days a small town, remained
peaceful until the middle of the 19th century when it started to expand as
a result of coffee-growing. From then on, opportunities began to spring up
everywhere and the capital of the state of São Paulo has never stopped
growing. Immigrants came from all over the world to solve the labor
problem and nowadays it is estimated to be the third largest Italian city
in the world, the largest Japanese city outside Japan, the third largest
Lebanese city outside
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Monument to the Bandeirantes With an economic infrastructure that was established during the last century and a half, the city has an integrated industry, a network of services linked to the main world centers and extensive resources for information, leisure and culture. There has been a trend to consolidate its vocation as a large and modern metropolis bent towards the provision of services that rely on leading edge technology. The intense cultural life of São Paulo received a major boost during the 1920s when it hosted the Modern Art Week, the landmark for a movement to encourage renewal within Brazilian art. Nowadays, that dynamism is expressed in the capital's well-appointed museums, the range of options offered and a certain guarantee for artists that to achieve success in São Paulo signifies general acclaim. The city also offers considerable opportunity for leisure and one of its main assets is perhaps its range of restaurants, as varied as the origins of the paulistas themselves. |
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| Museums | |||
| MUSEUNS | |||
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São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
MASP Building The MASP was created by the journalist Assis Chateaubriand, and its final home, designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi, was inaugurated in 1968. Bo Bardi's design was in the "brutalist" style in which the materials used were not to be masked in any way; it complied with the legal requirements of retaining the appearance of the belvedere where it was built. The building is suspended by two enormous porticoes, bearing a 9,200 ton load and resulting in an open span of 74 meters. The Museum houses one of Brazil's richest art collections which was assembled thanks to the dedication of Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi, director of the Museum for many years. It is considered to be the most important European art collection in Latin America and contains works by great masters such as Degas, Renoir, Modigliani and Bonnard, amongst others. Pinacoteca do Estado
The Museums of Modern Art and of Contemporary Art (MAM and MAC)
At a general meeting in 1963, the MAM decided to transfer its collection to the University of São Paulo. Together with two other major collections - those of Ciccillo Matarazzo and Yolanda Penteado - it forms the embryo of the Museum of Contemporary Art - University of São Paulo (MAC-USP), considered to be one of the most important contemporary art collections in Latin America. In that same year, the MAM closed, emerging later in a different form, and the São Paulo Biennial came into being as a Foundation, no longer holding any commitment with regard to the donation of works but continuing to promote major biennial exhibitions, featuring both Brazilian and international contemporary art. With a collection of more than 5,000 works, including oils, drawings, engravings, sculpture, paintings, ceramics and tapestry, the MAC is the largest museum in Latin America specializing in 20th century western work. In addition to marking out the main guidelines of the plastic language of the 20th century, the museum organizes regular exhibitions and offers optative training for graduate and external courses, both broad-based and specialized, including practical work and guided tours. The Museum of São Paulo (Museu Paulista)
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| Modern Art Week | |||
| MODERN ART WEEK | |||
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| Eating in São Paulo | |||
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EATING IN SÃO PAULO |
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São Paulo represents the largest concentration
of Japanese people outside Japan, resulting in an enormous choice of
places to eat different types of Japanese food (there are more than one
hundred restaurants). Proximity to the coast, the quantity and quality of
fish and seafood on which Japanese cuisine is based, are the ingredients
of its acknowledged excellence. The grill restaurants with their
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Lebanon, the largest Portuguese city outside
Portugal and the largest Spanish city outside Spain. In São Paulo, the mixing of races and ethnic
groups has increased with the passing of time and has had a profound
effect on the city's cultural and economic life. As a nucleus within the
Metropolitan Region of São Paulo which consists of 39 municipalities, the
capital is the main economic center and the largest urban concentration in
Brazil. Like all metropolises, it is facing problems that have arisen from
the population density, such as pollution and heavy traffic, but it is
also going through a process of economic deconcentration with the
restructuring of urban services, for example, the tripling of the
underground rail system by the year 2004, an indication that the quality
of life offered could soon be improving.
The building occupied by the Pinacoteca was
designed by Ramos de Azevedo in 1897 to house the School of Arts and
Trades, an institution that trained technicians and craftsmen in the
building of towns that had become rich as a result of coffee. With its
bare brick walls and broad windows incorporated into the urban setting,
the Pinacoteca underwent major changes and nowadays with its restored
halls, covered inner courtyards, restored roof and specially designed
lighting, it houses major exhibitions, featuring works by Rodin and Miró,
for example. The Museum's profile runs specifically from 19th
century Brazilian art to the present time and the exhibitions shown there
enable art forms to be reassessed in the light of themes that are
evocative of Brazil. The collection consists of 4,000 pieces and is of
special significance for São Paulo because it brings together works by
paulista artists such as Almeida Jr., Pedro Alexandrino and Oscar Pereira
da Silva as well as representative works by Cândido Portinari, Anita
Malfatti, Victor Brecheret, Tarsila do Amaral and Di Cavalcanti.
The
MAM, founded in 1948, the MAC founded in
1963 and the São Paulo International Biennial are closely bound up with
each other, with Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, founder of the three
institutions being the central linking figure. From 1951, the
MAM
took the
initiative in running the Biennial and included in its regulations the
requirement that all the prizes awarded should take the form of
acquisition for the Museum's collection. As a consequence of this, the
young museum formed an artistic heritage that was truly representative of
contemporary art.
The first monument built specially to
preserve the memory of Brazilian Independence, the Museum of São Paulo
which opened on September 7th, 1895, was created as a Natural Science
Museum in the mould of European museums of that time, when the study and
exhibiting of zoology and botany were the main themes. After 1917, under
the directorship of the historian Affonso D'Escragnolle Taunay, the Museum
resumed its original vocation and is nowadays a museum of history that is
concerned with the study of material culture. Its collection, consisting
of around 100,000 exhibits, comprises works of art, furniture, costumes
and objects belonging to figures from Brazilian history including pioneers
(bandeirantes) and emperors. The facilities house a library containing
100,000 volumes and a Historical Documentation Center housing 40.000
manuscripts.
Being mainly industrial and nowadays Brazil's first
city and economic leader, São Paulo was colored in the early stages of
its development by the immigration of a wide variety of different ethnic
races. There is striking evidence of this multi-culturelism in the city
with its lively and contemporary excitement. The various districts where a
specific culture predominates offer us the opportunity to live side by
side with the most varied habits and customs. But it is in gastronomy, for
the delight and feasting of those who seek it out, that the city holds its
great
fascination. The street markets become a carnival with their
abundance of colorful produce and mysterious aromas. They are a clear
indication of the important role played by the people of São Paulo in
gastronomic culture. The various districts of the city offer the most
varied and typical restaurants; the cuisine represented there ranges from
the most traditional to the most exotic, from the most sophisticated to
the most simple; dishes from the Mediterranean, Western and Eastern Europe,
Scandinavia, Asia, the Americas and from all over Brazil and food of all
kinds - standard, vegetarian, fish and also seafood.
barbecued
meat, varieties of salad and typical accompaniments offer a unique
opportunity to try the different cuts of meat. An experience not to be
missed. Lastly, one of the most interesting and enjoyable
gastronomic phenomena: pizza. It has been said even by Italians from
Naples and Americans from Chicago - the pizza's hallowed centers of
excellence - that São Paulo produces the most varied and delicious pizzas
in the world. On Sunday evenings, the people of São Paulo meet to share
the magic of this doughy disc and its various toppings. The city's
pizzerias, with their relaxed and unusual atmosphere, their wood-burning
ovens and the cooks juggling the pizza bases, are a show on their own. The
eager and animated conversation about football and the aroma of the
various seasonings used are a sign of the importance attached to this
civilized and enjoyable custom of sitting around a table in São Paulo.