A construção de uma cidade moderna: o projeto modernista em Cataguases nos anos 1940 a 1960

Abstract

The modernist project in Cataguazes presents significant peculiarities in the formation of the cultural landscape and in the construction of the population's identity. Reflecting the economic and cultural development brought about by industrialization, the project followed the same modernist foundations that came from Rio de Janeiro. By commissioning the design of his residence and a school from Oscar Niemeyer, the industrialist Francisco Inácio Peixoto became the main patron and proponent of modern aesthetics, at the head of a group of intellectuals who saw in Modernism the possibility of reconfiguring the local landscape and the social thinking of Cataguazes. This text discusses: a) the sociocultural context of Cataguases, referring to the political dispute -and urban reforms- between the Vieira Rezende and Peixoto families; b) analyzes the formation of patronage of modern architecture and its influence on the transformation of local thinking, based on the theories of Howard Becker (1982), Maria Lucia Bueno (2005) and Pierre Bourdieu (1989); c) and finally, it presents a brief survey of the existing modernist murals in the city, highlighting their characteristics and their compositional elements.