THE REVOLTED ARCHITECT

Politiquement, j'ai toujours été un révolté.
OSCAR NIEMEYER

With the end of Estado Novo in Brazil, in 1945, the communist militants, arrested during the dictatorship of Gétulio Vargas, are amnestied. Then, the architect Oscar Niemeyer decides to host, in his own house, Luís Carlos Prestes, general-secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party. After a few weeks of coexistence, Niemeyer converts himself to the cause and joins the party that will chair in 1992.

In 1964, he is invited to Israel by Yekutiel Federman, owner of Dan Hotels, to discuss some potential projects. Meanwhile, there is a military coup in Brazil. The coupists sack the headquarters of the magazine Módulo and his studio. Incidents that force him to extend his, in principle brief, stay in Israel. But, six months later, he ends up returning to his country.

In 1965, a year after his return to Brazil, he resignes from his position as a professor at the university in protest for the dictatorial policies of the Brazilian military government and, taking advantage of the success of his monographic exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, leaves for France. In this exile, which will last about twenty years, he designs, among other works, the Headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris.

Siège du Parti communiste français (sketches by Oscar Niemeyer, 1965)

In a few days, Niemeyer develops a preliminary project in accordance with the local conditions and its surroundings, that is to say: in accordance with the size and shape of the site, as well as with the orientation and operation of the building And at the same time it gives an answer to one of the main requirements of the program: to provide a safe building, with discreet and easy controlled entrances.

All of this explains the final solution adopted: a block in curved line which unfolds throughout the whole area of ​​the plot that borders with the neighbors, where the party's offices are located. In this way it frees the rest of the lot and preserves, between the building and its neighbors, the spaces necessary for its vertical accesses, located outside to facilitate future modifications that the program of the building may eventually require.

Then he places the rest of the building a meter and a half below the street level, creating a system of inclined planes where we can find a large auditorium, semi-buried but easily accessible, and the entrance hall, which it is called foyer de la classe ouvrière, where, through multiple curved walls, a whole series of spaces for exhibition, waiting and conference rooms are located.

Siège du Parti communiste français (photos by Joan de Torres Calsapeu, 2000)

In the words of its own author, the building becomes an example of contemporary architecture and a potential point of tourist attraction. But it is not a simple architectural challenge. It is the worker's house. A building with new, simple forms, without luxurious and superfluous finishings that represents the fight against misery, discrimination and injustice which, according to him, must be the goal of French communism.

However, it is not a communist who welcomes him, and facilitates his architectural practice in France but André Malraux, then minister of culture of President Charles de Gaulle's last government. In 1959 Malraux had described Brasilia as the city of hope and Palácio da Alvorada's columns as the most beautiful ever seen after the Greeks. It is thanks to Malraux's devotion for the work of Niemeyer, which he collects in his Imaginary Museum, that the Brazilian architect owes him, to a large extent, his projects in France.

According to Niemeyer himself, Georges Pompidou, then prime minister, stated that this building is the only good thing that the Communists have done, ignoring the fact that the architect has not a quite very rebellious past. In fact, in 1936 he designed, in collaboration with, among others, Lúcio Costa and the advice of Le Corbusier, the Headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Rio de Janeiro commissioned by a fervent fascist and Brazilian anti-communist like Gustavo Capanema.

MIES AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Elle est belle, elle ne signifie rien.
ANDRÉ GIDE

Where do the sculptures of Aristides Maillol which appear in Mies van der Rohe's collages in his Museum project for a small town come from? In this project, commissioned by the Architectural Forum for its special issue "New Buildings for 194X" in May 1943, four Maillol sculptures share space with Picasso's Guernica and with another cubist painting by Braque: 'Torse de jeune fille' from 1930, 'Étude pour le monument à Paul Cézanne' from 1912, 'L'Action enchaînée' from 1906 and 'La Nuit' from 1905.

The origin of Guernica in this imaginary museum is clear. Picasso's painting arrives in America in 1939 and, until 1942, it is exhibited in several north american cities. Among them Chicago. From December 4th to 28th, 1940, The Arts Club of Chicago organizes a retrospective exhibition of Maillol's work. In addition, a year before this exhibition, a monograph is published by Berlin-based art historian John Rewald.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'Concert Hall' (1942)

In 1942 Mies choses another sculpture by Maillol to illustrate his Concert Hall project. In this case, he creates a photomontage, with an image of the assembly hangar of the aircraft factory Glenn L. Martin Company, by the architect Albert Kahn, as a backdrop, where Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' appears, in the foreground, as a ready-made. His presence, however, reinforces the idea that, in this context, nothing is what it seems. It is not until a few years later that the sculptor Mary Callery, a personal friend of Mies, will remove Maillol's work to place the figure of a scribe from Ancient Egypt. Although in the catalog of his retrospective exhibition, between September 16th, 1947, and January 25th, 1948, at the MoMA, Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' will still be there.

That photomontage has its origins in an architectural design course that Mies teaches in January 1941 at the IIT. In this course he proposes as a theme a concert hall and three different ways of approaching his architectural solution. One of his students, Paul Camagna, opts for the solution of a single large open space with strictly acoustic partitions. And this is how the interior photography of a large industrial space is chosen, such as the assembly hangar for the PBM Mariner patrol bomber flying boat. Years later, Campagna himself will admit that the concert hall project is more of Mies than his.

Peter Behrens 'Ausstellungsraum in der Kunsthalle, Internationale Kunst- und Große Gartenbau-Ausstellung, Mannheim' (1907)

A year before Mies entered his studio, Peter Behrens asks Karl Ernst Osthaus, an art collector and patron, for a female nude by Aristides Maillol like the one it was exhibited, between April and September 1906, at the eleventh Kunstausstellung (art show) of the Berlin Secession. Osthaus brings him a plaster reproduction of 'Le Méditerranée'. This is how Maillol's sculpture, perhaps under the influence of german Hellenism, will become the main character of the room created by Behrens at the Internationale Kunst- und Große Gartenbau-Ausstellung in Mannheim.

But Maillol is not the first sculptor to whom Mies turns to in his works. In fact, in his collages for the courtyard houses of 1938 he incorporates sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, a personal friend of his brother Ewald who was also a sculptor. Another photograph of the interior of Villa Tugendhat from 1930 already shows a sculpture by Lehmbruck himself. It is none other than 'Torso' from 1914. And in the Glasraum (glass room), designed by Mies and Lilly Reich, for the 1927 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, we find his 'Maedchen, sich umwendend' of 1913.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'German Pavilion, Barcelona, preliminary scheme' (1928)

In one of the first versions of the German Pavilion in Barcelona, ​​Mies plans to incorporate up to three sculptures. One where we can find now ‘Der Morgen’ (the morning) by Georg Kolbe. A second, also on open air, at the edge of the main pond. And the third in the central space of the Pavilion. On the other hand, in a collage of 1928 a figure seated in the inner pond is glimpsed. There is also a drawing by the architect Sergius Ruegenberg, then Mies's assistant and later Hans Scharoun's collaborator in his Berlin Kollektivplan, where a figure sitting in the same place can also be seen.

If Kolbe’s statue, at that stage of the design,  isn’t even drawn it may be because it isn’t expected to be there. If we also consider that Lehmbruck and Kolbe did not make this type of sculpture, it can also be that the sculpture Mies has in mind, from the beginning, is none other than Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée'. On the other hand, the Pavilion is nothing but a Mies collage. In this case, a badly re-constructed collage. Because, despite not being a work by Mies, both Puig i Cadafalch's exterior colonnade and Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' are integral parts of the Pavilion. Because form, by itself, does not exist.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'German Pavilion, Barcelona, interior perspective' (1928-29)

Nowadays, you can see Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' in the courtyard of Perpignan's City Council. A woman isolated and elevated in a pedestal leaning her, left, arm on her, also left, bent leg. It could be said that his skin is crushed by the sun of this Catalan Arcadia. Go see her, stand in front of her, accompany her for a while. She is all we have left of what could have happened in Mies Pavilion.