Interesting facts: São Paulo, known as Sampa to its residents, is Brazil's banking, industrial and cultural capital. I was surprised to learn that it had the largest community of people of Japanese descent outside Japan, the largest population of Italian descendants outside Italy and a significant Arab community. In addition are one million people of German stock and sizable Chinese, Armenian, Greek, Korean and Hungarian communities. São Paulo also has the largest openly gay community in Latin America. An estimated 20 million people live in greater São Paulo, making it the third largest metropolis on earth!
After getting in late from the phenomenal Iguacu Falls the previous night, we hightailed it on the Sunday morning to Mosteiro de São Bento, home to Benedictine monks, because the monastery is famous for its beautiful singing mass with Gregorian chants and organ every Sunday morning at 10. The church is one of the most important churches in São Paulo and is where the Pope stays when he is in Brazil.
Our guide book had a suggested walking tour which we followed. It led us to the covered Mercado Municipal, a massive building with its series of vast domes and plenty of stained glass that reminded me more of a train station than a market!
Inside was a feast for our eyes and our stomachs!
The Banespa skyscraper was constructed to be the headquarters of the Bank of the State of São Paulo between 1939 and 1947. Soon after its completion in the 1940s, it was named the world's largest structure of reinforced concrete. It was designed by Plínio Botelho do Amaral, who was inspired by the Empire State Building and Frank Lloyd Wright. We were hoping to access its top floor for panoramic views of the city but it was closed on the weekend.
I found it very uncomfortable walking around the city center because of the numbers of homeless people sleeping on the street, the dumpster diving and the overwhelming stench of urine. Plus, the huge amounts of graffiti-marred buildings did nothing to make the city more appealing.
The Monument to the Black Mother was a heart-wrenching statue that depicted an African slave woman nursing a white child. The poem underneath lamented the woman's inability to provide food for her own children.
Much more pleasing was our time wandering through Parque Republica.
Homeless people sleeping in the park's amphitheater.
Construction of the very attractive Theatro Municipal was begun in 1903 in the Parisian style. I read that the baroque building with its art nouveau features is the pride of the city.
I don't think we've ever seen a cute manger scene than this one!
The unusual ceiling was very appealing.
Directly in front of the church was a controversial sculpture of a French man kissing an indigenous woman. In the background was the College of Law and the Scales of Justice.
The tagging or graffiti was on a scale we'd never seen before anywhere.
We were glad to escape inside the Cathedral for some relaxing moments but I wished some of its wealth could have been spent on alleviating the suffering outside its doors.
The view from the cathedral steps to the square:
From Monday to Frid,ay Paulista is an ordinary big city street, busy and noisy. We were so lucky that the street was closed to traffic on weekends, so that instead of suits and ties there were bikers, young and older people of all stripes enjoying themselves. People sold all sorts of handicrafts on the street and musicians and entertainers were set up on almost every block.
The temperature was 30 degrees Celsius or 86 for us metrically challenged Americans! The downside of the avenue was that it had way too few trees, so on such a hot summer day it felt "like walking on a concrete pizza oven" as someone described it!
MASP was founded by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand as the first modern museum in 1947 and completed in 1968. MASP's collection contained more than 10,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs and costumes from a wide range of periods. It encompassed art from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. As you can see from the painting of MASP below, the remarkable museum is held ‘in the air’ by four red concrete pillars!
Regular readers of my annual blogs know that Steven and I make a beeline for art museums on our travels so we were both curious to see what MASP would be like. Imagine our surprise and absolute delight when we entered the huge open space only to see all the paintings mounted on large glass panels suspended at eye level! It created the impression of them floating in space. It was unlike anything we'd ever seen before and we both felt like we'd hit the jackpot of art museums!
Raphael's Resurrection of Christ was painted between 1499 and 1502.
Cezanne's Old Pine:
Some works by Van Gogh!
When we saw Degas' Four Ballet Dancers, I wondered what other delights were still in store for us at MASP.
Two works by Picasso from his first 'Paris Period' where he moved at age 23 and depicted the life of the poor and marginalized people.
There was also a few great Brazilian paintings, including some fine works by Candido Portinari, an artist we hadn't been aware of beforehand. We learned that Portinari made the panels War and Peace at the UN headquarters in NY and that "his art epitomized the contrasts that marked Brazilian culture. Portinari portrayed the dominant elite on one hand while also painting the working class."
The description of Portinari's 1944 painting The Northern Migrants indicated he focused on migrants fleeing from drought-stricken lands.
A work by Rembrandt was only surpassed by ...
three outstanding paintings by Franz Hals.
To reach the next level, visitors had to go literally outside and descend the concrete stairs!
The temporary exhibition showcased compelling graphics by the Guerrilla Girls, a group I had never heard of previously. As always, just click on any photo to see it more clearly.
I loved the White Bread Ingredients: White Men, Artificial Flavorings, Preservatives. *Contains less than the minimum daily requirement of white women and non-Whites. How long will it be before women artists of all types have greater parity, I wonder?
I will leave you with this last graphic from the Guerrilla Girls so you can make of it what you will.
After getting in late from the phenomenal Iguacu Falls the previous night, we hightailed it on the Sunday morning to Mosteiro de São Bento, home to Benedictine monks, because the monastery is famous for its beautiful singing mass with Gregorian chants and organ every Sunday morning at 10. The church is one of the most important churches in São Paulo and is where the Pope stays when he is in Brazil.
Attending the mass with its choir of Benedictine monks singing Gregorian chants was absolutely beautiful and a perfect introduction to the massive city. The monastery, founded in the late 16th century and located in the historical heart of São Paulo, also included a College and a bakery that sold cakes and breads prepared by the monks according to ancient recipes.
Behind the monument was the pretty Nuestra Senhora do Rosario dos Homens Pretos Church.
The park turned into an open-air market on the weekends which was fun exploring.
Two churches stood next to each other, each with the same name! The Igreja de São Francisco de Assis, the church of the settlement of São Paulo at the start of the 17th century and rebuilt in the 18th century was one of the best preserved colonial structures in the city.
We commented that nowhere in the world had we seen so many homeless people as in São Paulo. No wonder our travel notes advised against taking the self-guided walking tour on the weekends when the streets were mostly desolate.
The old heart of the city, Praça da Sé or literally Cathedral Square, had sadly also seen better days with its fair share of pickpockets, street hawkers and homeless people.
We were very happy to get out of the area altogether and take the metro to Avenida Paulista, one of the most famous streets in São Paulo. Once the domain of coffee barons, it began to go 'Manhattan' in the 1950s with ultra modern towering office buildings and financial center built in the nineties.
Hot as a pizza oven it may have been but it was a hoot walking about a mile along the street and watching the acts and antics of the people! We felt blessedly safe and carefree on Paulista unlike all those areas we'd walked earlier.
Sampa's pride is the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the most comprehensive collection of Western art in Latin America and located on Paulista. Below the private, non-profit museum known as MASP was a concrete plaza which turned into an antique fair on Sundays.
Raphael's Resurrection of Christ was painted between 1499 and 1502.
The only thing that we found frustrating when gazing in delight at the paintings was the name of the painter and the painting was on the back of each work of art. I am sure the museum was purposely designed in such a way that the impact of seeing row upon row of paintings with no distracting information would be paramount which I recognize. However, having to walk behind each painting every time to identify the artist broke up the flow and was a seeming time-waster. I wish I knew of some 'solution' and wonder if other MASP visitors felt the same way.
Hieronymus Bosch's The Temptations of St. Anthony:
We were stupefied by the fantastic collection of paintings by Old Masters such as Delacroix, Velasquez, Renoir, Corot and so many others. What a wonderful treasure trove of art in one museum!
Gaugin's Poor Fisherman:
The long necks and sad faces could only have been painted by Modigliani.
I could hardly believe it when I read the shocking news that paintings by Portinari and Picasso were stolen in 2007 because the billion-dollar collection lacked motion detectors or cameras with infared capabilities! Fortunately, the paintings were eventually recovered.
A good shot of the Sunday antique fair on the concrete plaza under the museum:
Though we had just a brief visit to São Paulo, I was so glad that our visit to the magnificent MASP trumped our initial unsettling impressions of the city.
Next post: On to Ouro Preto, a beautiful city of churches and hills.
Posted on May 29th, 2018, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Posted on May 29th, 2018, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
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