Mid-Century Tile Panels: Guest Post Jorge Soares

I just wanted to say thanks again Jorge. You really outdid yourself this time. The transformation of an art form over the years and through different eyes is breathtaking and again... something you wouldn't normally make the connection to if you were just visiting. A beautiful history lesson once again, in fact if my history lessons were like this growing up perhaps I wouldn't have hated that subject so much. xox K I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.



Tile panels have been used in Portugal for the last five centuries as an artistic expression. Thanks to our Portuguese heritage, they were used in Brazil not only for their obvious qualities protecting buildings from intense rains and insulating interiors from the heat, but for their beauty. You can see what I mean when you walk inside the 18th C. Igreja da Gloria, with its panels created between 1735 and 1740 by Mestre Valentim de Almeida.

The Brazilian architects and artists who were creating something new in the middle of the 20th C. were smart enough to give an old artform a new look and incorporate them in their new buildings. The demand was so big for a time that Paulo Rossi Osir created a company, Osirarte, just to manufacture them.



But stop being so didactic. Sorry, I just love this thing. So let me show something nice: the panels Roberto Burle Marx  created for what is now the Instituto Moreira Salles, designed by the architect Olavo Redig de Campos 


And after that, a favorite of mine. Anisio Medeiros was my drawing teacher at Architecture School in Rio de Janeiro. He was also a famous art director in films, and I would rather chat with him than draw, I am afraid to say. I dropped out to work in the theatre and in films. He did these panels in 1959 for the monument dedicated to the dead in World War II. 



And last for today, a real treasure. The Palacio Capanema is a landmark modernistic building finished in 1943, designed by the cream of the crop of Brazilian architects (including a young Niemeyer) in collaboration with Le Corbusier himself. The main panels were designed by the painter Candido Portinari and the lateral ones by Paulo Rossi Osir. The building is being restored and is a candidate to become a Unesco World Heritage Site.

*All photos and content by Jorge Soares.