For those more attentive, Recife is an immense art museum to the open sky, ready to be visited. Thanks to a municipal law of 1961, buildings with more than 1,000 m² of built area are only granted a construction license if the places where the sculpture and panel are to be located are already specified in the building plans. Any of the two should be ordered from one of the artists registered at the town hall. An obligation, that, according to the sculptor Jobson Figueiredo, ended up transforming Recife into the world’s biggest art museum to the open sky.
The law allowed famous artists such as Abelardo da Hora, Jobson Figueiredo, Corbiniano, Francisco Brennand, amongst several others, to invade the everyday landscape of tourists and RecifensesT.N.. “Rich people, when they want to see a work of art, they put a tie on and go to a museum with air conditioning. Not me. All I need is to walk on the streets”, says bricklayer Juvino, who, after placing so many sculptures in the city’s buildings, was attracted to the arts’ world.
Aware of this behaviour, typical of people who live in Recife, some entrepreneurs started to invest increasingly stronger in these sculptures. However, it hasn’t been always like this. If today the pieces and law please tourists, city residents and even some entrepreneurs, in the past the situation was very different. In the beginning, the law was questioned by contractors, openly disobeyed and even waived by the militaries dictatorship of the 1964 coup.
The majority involved in the project, which were part of the Popular Cultural Movement, ended up in the dictatorship's basement. Years went by, the militaries lost power and, with time, art in construction began appearing again. Sculptures in the garden stopped meaning only extra costs and started to take on investment characteristics; which was attractive to buyers.
The art that invades the streets, slowly, enters homes as well, even of middle-class citizens. Before the difficulty of paying for an unreleased work from Abelardo da Hora, for example, the PernambucanosT.N. got together in partnership to win the right to have such a beautiful work in their rooms. In the end, no one knows for sure where this connection of the Recifense with art comes from. Could the law of 1961 be the cause or a mere consequence of this connection?
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