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During the 1950s, Marcel Gautherot captures the spectacular construction of the rising metropolis – designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. Eventually he will spend most of his life in Brazil, where he mainly focuses on photographing architecture and ethnography. During the first year of his stay in Brazil, Gautherot made a remarkable series of documentary detail photographs – always from a special angle and with emphatic contrasts – of the baroque sculptures produced by Antônio Francisco Lisboa "Aleijadinho", a Brazilian mulatto sculptor from the 18th century. Luc Tuymans points to the colonial aspect of this sculptural art, which makes clear how much the Baroque expanded in space and time, as recorded by Gautherot.

Text: Hans Willemse
Translations: Michael Meert