Casa da Arquitectura Centro Português de Arquitectura

Exhibition Siza and Oscar: Beyond the Sea opens in September

It is an abstract visual dialogue between the architecture of Siza Vieira in Brazil and that of Oscar Niemeyer in Portugal around 28 works that pay a photographic tribute to two icons of modernist architecture.

Curated by researcher Ângela Berlinde, the exhibition proposes an abstract visual dialogue between the architecture of Siza Vieira in Brazil through the Iberê Camargo Foundation and that of Oscar Niemeyer in Portugal with the Hotel in Madeira.

"The photographs by Bassul that inspire this conversation of three - beyond the sea - invite us to feel the heartbeat of the work of two major architects of our time, Siza and Niemeyer, treasures that remain to mark the flow and temperamental geometries of this transatlantic movement," says the curator.

The author, José Roberto Bassul, says that "when I photographed, in 2019, the extraordinary building of the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, I knew that this was the only work by Álvaro Siza built in Brazil. With the camera, I collected visual fragments of the silent subtlety of the greatest Portuguese architect.

Some time later, I discovered a coincidence. Oscar Niemeyer, the most important Brazilian architect, also has only one work in Portugal: a hotel on the island of Madeira. In 2021, when a Covid truce allowed it, I also collected abstract fractions of the building there.

I then built a visual dialogue between these two immense modernists. One on each side of the Atlantic, they met little. In the licences of the imagination, however, they converse intensely. And they speak the same language. Not only Portuguese, but the language without borders of poetry."

José Roberto Bassul

Architect and photographer, José Roberto Bassul was born in Rio de Janeiro (1957) and lives in Brasilia. He defines his photography as "an attempt to draw thoughts, to project desires, to construct spaces for the imagination". Sometimes in geometric and abstract visual constructions, sometimes in experimental approaches, his work focuses on architecture, the urban landscape and contemporary aspects of life in cities. He has received several national and international awards, including 1st place at the 10th Prix Photo AF 2021, the Latin America Award at FotoRio 2020, the Photobook of the Year at the Moscow International Foto Awards - MIFA 2020 and 1st place, twice, at the International Photography Awards - IPA 2018 and 2021.

Published in specialized magazines in Brazil, France, USA, England, Mexico, Argentina, Italy and Spain, his work has been frequently exhibited in festivals, galleries and museums, in nine solo shows and dozens of group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. He published the photobooks Paisagem Concretista (2018) and Sobre Quase Nada (2020). He has works in important private collections and in the permanent collections of the National Museum of the Republic and the Secretariat of Culture, in Brasilia, the MAM - Museum of Modern Art (Joaquim Paiva collection) and the MAR - Rio Museum of Art, in Rio de Janeiro, the Contemporary Daily Collection, in Belém, the Museum of Photography, in Fortaleza, the IMS - Moreira Salles Institute, in São Paulo, the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, in Arles, and the BnF - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris.