Entry #9 - Pinacoteca do Estado

The entrance

A  drawing of the exterior of the museum

    

A model scale of the Pinacoteca

Yesterday, we went to Pinacoteca do Estado, an art museum in Sao Paulo. Originally, it was a government building, but then it became the first art school of Sao Paulo. While being a school, they had a room exclusively for paintings and other pieces of art called the "pinacoteca." Ultimately, the whole building became a pinacoteca.

  

In this two pictures above you can see the overall distribution of the whole museum. I enjoy this particularly because it made it a more open space because of the balconies and brighter because of the glass ceilings.

All around the museum you get a feeling of rich culture because of the materials that were used to construct the building, the distribution and the way the art pieces are display. For instance, a lot of the portraits had golden frames and the paintings had thick and dark wood frames. At the same time, there are paintings, like the one above, where the artists tried to capture the huge social differences that existed in Brazil between slaves and the Portuguese/Brazilian nobility. 

Emperor Pedro I

        Dona Amelia, Duchess of Braganza

Maria Leopoldina of Austria, Empress consort of Brazil 

The three portraits represent three members of the Brazilian royal family. I was kinda disappointed because I was looking forward to see more art pieces about the ninetieth century and the royal family of Brazil.

Religion was and still is an important part of Brazilian culture, which is evidenced by the many art pieces that had any sort religious symbolism. Also, there is a vast amount of paintings and sculptures made by foreign artists, which evidence the the diversity of the immigrants that came to Brazil in the ninetieth century.

Behind the building, these is a park called "PARQUE-LUZ." Although we didn't walk through it, on the backside of the museum, they had a balcony from where you had a great view of the park.

GIF of Parque-Luz view from the museum

Parque-Luz views from the museum

A painting of Vila Mariana, which is where our hostel is located

Overall, I thought it was a "pretty" museum, but I felt that their collections were somewhat limited. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but in a city as huge as São Paulo, where everything is done on a big scale, I was expecting a bigger and more diverse museum. 

Here's the link to the Pinacoteca do Estado's website for more information:

http://www.pinacoteca.org.br/pinacoteca-pt/