Between the Concrete and the Abstract: The Works of Armando de Holanda Cavalcanti with Athos Bulcão

Abstract

Among the modern cultural manifestations in Brazil, the visual arts and architecture have unique expressions. Since the 1930s, when the Brazilian Modern began to be acknowledged, the debate about modernity in arts and architecture integrated the abstractionism and the geometry. This debate was highlighted by the historiography as a moment of dissemination and discussion about the integration of the arts, one of the most celebrated characteristics of the Modern Brazilian architecture, as Liernur (2008) points out, encouraging the relationship in the Brazilian case to the valorization of regional elements - the tile, tradition of the Brazilian colonial period. The next period, of consolidation of the modern, expresses the relations between visual arts and architecture more clearly. In the 70's, these expressions are present in Pernambuco, in the drawings of the tiles in “Parque Histórico Nacional dos Guararapes” - PHNG (1975), resulting from the collaboration between the architect Armando de Holanda Cavalcanti and the artist Athos Bulcão.The works in reinforced concrete with abstract tile panels on facades, composed by the access pavilion, administrative area and cafeterias, enable reflections on synthesis x integration of arts. In PHNG, would be the panels minor constituents of the edifications? Would be architecture scenario for visual arts? Or both maintain autonomy in detriment of synthesis / integration? In these works, art and architecture enrich the production of the national Modern Movement.