ABSTRACT
The first chapter focuses on the years 1930 and 1931, marked by Lucio Costa’s first important public engagement within the New Republic of Getúlio Vargas: the direction of the National School of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro. The affair, brief but considered fundamental to the process of artistic renewal of the country, is here addressed by extending the analysis to the premise of Costa’s own formation in the same institution and to the future scenarios that it later gave access to. Costa’s direction of the school established modern artistic expressions and updated educational methods. However, its inherent institutional clash put the political balances and power-plays between the old and new forces of the country at stake, greatly defining it as a crucial stage in his professional formation. The experience, although destined to fail at least in terms of the didactic programme, would give Costa the intellectual stimulation and the concrete opportunity to steer his already consolidated professional career toward a strong modernist militancy, finally coming to identify his persona as a reference figure in the broader movement of artistic and architectural renewal.
