Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Rio in 1934 and went to work as an intern in Lúcio Costa's office, joining the team for the Ministry of Education and Health. Over seventy-eight years he designed roughly six hundred projects, and from 1957 he built most of the monuments of Brasília to Costa's plan. A lifelong socialist, atheist and member of the Brazilian Communist Party, he left the country after the 1964 military coup and opened an office in Paris, spending time in Cuba and the Soviet Union; he returned in 1985, received the Pritzker Prize in 1988 and served as the party's president from 1992 to 1996. His late works include the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum of 1996 and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum of 2002. He died in Rio in 2012, aged 104.