Alberto da Veiga Guignard: Biography and Work: The Era of Minas and His Legacy
Discover the life and work of Alberto da Veiga Guignard, a renowned Brazilian artist who left an indelible mark on the art world.
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In 1944, at the invitation of Mayor Juscelino Kubitschek, he moved to Belo Horizonte with the intention of founding the first educational institution focused on the plastic arts in Minas, the Municipal School of Fine Arts of Belo Horizonte, implementing the first Modern Art Exhibition in the capital of Minas that year. He began to teach and direct the free drawing and painting course of the School of Fine Arts, through which Amilcar de Castro, Farnese de Andrade, and Lygia Clark, among others, passed.
He remained in charge of the school, and in his honor, it was renamed the Guignard School.
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Guignard lived in that region for the next seventeen years, drawing inspiration from it for a varied series of landscape works, including sketches, drawings, oil paintings on canvas or wood, as well as portraits of people he lived with or encountered sporadically.
He passed away in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, on June 26, 1962. His body rests in the Church of São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto, a city he had a special passion for and which was the setting for many of his works. He loved it so much that the Guignard House Museum was founded there, in addition to his works, it is possible to find photos and personal objects of the artist.
Guignard and Ouro Preto
Enchanted by the landscape of the historic cities of Minas, Guignard mythologized the theme in a work that imposed itself on the respect and admiration of Brazil. The townhouse where the museum was installed belongs to the IEPHA since 1974 and was ceded to the Secretariat of State for Culture of Minas Gerais to be the seat of the museum.
The Museum was inaugurated in 1987 and is part of the Operational System of the Secretariat of State for Culture of Minas Gerais, through the Superintendence of Museums, installed in a historic building in the center of Ouro Preto. Its collection brings together works by the author and pieces that illustrate his life and offer a broad view of the master's trajectory. Temporary exhibitions, research, and educational action dynamize the cultural space.
LOCATION: Conde de Bobadela Street (Right Street), 110, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil
LETTERS TO AMALITA, HIS PLATONIC LOVE
Guignard's life is filled with picturesque and melancholic episodes. In 1932, at the age of 36, he met the music student Amalita Fontenelle, eleven years his junior, at a concert at the Municipal Theater. For five years, Guignard wrote to his platonic love, cards and more cards on practically all commemorative dates. Hand-drawn and contoured cards with love phrases, dedications, and poems. They even exchanged letters, but the cards were never sent. Approximately 120 cards were collected in an album and donated, still alive, to the poet Oswald de Andrade. Today, they form part of the Casa Guignard collection in Ouro Preto and reflect Guignard's timidity in expressing his feelings.
To understand the rest of this journey, continue reading our next article: Alberto da Veiga Guignard: Biography and Work: Technical Analysis and Major Works.
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