Gregori Warchavchik , pioneer architect of the modern movement in Brazil . Of Russian origin who arrived in Brazil in 1923 .
He published in 1925 , the first Brazilian demonstration focused on the proposal of a new modern position, “Acerca da Arquitetura Moderna”. The first architectural example was completed three years later, precisely with the construction of the Casa da Rua Santa Cruz.
“I do not intend to copy the European ways and means; I am fascinated by the Brazilian landscape and I try to create an architecture in keeping with this region, with the climate and the old traditions of this country.”
Gregory Warchavchik
Summary
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- 1 Biographical summary
- 2 Main works
- 3 Importance of his work
- 1 Santa Cruz Street House
- 4 Sources
biographical synthesis
Gregori Warchavchik ( 1896-1972 ) studied at the University of Odessa and at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Rome . During his stay in Italy he worked in the office of Marcello Piacentini . In 1923 he went to Brazil , where he began living in Sao Paulo and working in the architecture office of Santos (Sao Paulo) . He was convinced of the need to create a new architecture with a functionalist line that would use the knowledge and materials of the industry, although he did not stop defending the values of the previous styles. In1925 published the Manifesto On Modern Architecture in the Correio da Manhá .
In 1927 – 1928 he managed to build, under difficult circumstances, his own house in São Paulo ; it was also the first modern building of his. Both this and other previous house projects are characterized by their clear geometry and rectangular shapes, even when the lack of available material imposed certain restrictions: whitewashed brick walls instead of concrete and wooden windows instead of metal framed ones, which were preferable.
In 1929 – 1930 Warchavchik built a modernist house in São Paulo , which had no owner, and presented it to the public in an exhibition of modern art. He used a dark ceramic-clad plinth and curved balconies to give a high-flying air to a house built on a very small lot in São Paulo ( 1939 ); they were deviations from the modern orthogonal canon, which henceforth would be allowed to be used more and more with excellent results. Between 1931 and 1933 Warchavchik had a partnership with Lucio Costa in Rio de Janeiro.
Gregori Warchavchik after passing through Italy , where he began his studies in Architecture in Odessa . He was a great admirer of Wright’s work, meeting him in 1930 in a meeting with renowned Brazilian architect Lúcio Costa .
He was an architect adhering to the Futurist Current , his designs are characterized by Cubist design , always with the intention of building “machines for living”.
Main works
His first work, which has the honor of being the first modern house in Brazil , was designed in 1927 in São Paulo . The project not only included the exterior design, but also the interior and even a study of the lighting of the house. His architecture received great criticism at the time, however he laid the foundations for the development of a modern architectural school in Brazil, which has undoubtedly left behind the best generation of architects in the Latin American country.
Other works to highlight, always within the domestic architecture are the Itápolis Street House, a work where it tries to combine the aesthetic composition and the functional, as well as a house in Rio de Janeiro built on a rugged terrain, solved by smooth walls and right angles.
Importance of his work
The time adjustment of Brazilian architecture, in order to tune in with the international avant-garde, did not happen overnight. Nor was it the product of the work and will of a “national” architect. But it was in São Paulo that the Russian Jewish immigrant Gregori Warchavchik (1896-1972), born in the cosmopolitan city of Odessa, reviewed the academic training he received in Rome and laid the foundations for modern architecture in the country. Visible, although fractured due to local acclimatization, these bases added an extended symbolic milestone with the Exposição de uma modernista house, inaugurated in March 1930.
Santa Cruz Street House
The Casa Modernista da Rua Santa Cruz, designed by renowned architect Gregori Warchavchik, was designed and built between 1927 and 1928 , and is considered the first modern work to be established in Brazil. Of Russian origin, Warchavchik published in 1925 , the first Brazilian manifestation focused on the proposition of a new modern position, “Acerca da Arquitetura Moderna”. The first architectural example was completed three years later, precisely with the construction of the Casa da Rua Santa Cruz.
Built with the intention of renting it out, the house was presented to the public as Warchavchik’s tribute to the city, whose artistic and social environment, in his words, “allowed him to carry out, in such a short time, several constructions within the new orientation ”. Decorated with sculptures and paintings by exponents of local and international modernism, more than 20,000 visitors passed through it. With the exhibition, according to Oswald de Andrade , the “cycle of old-fashioned combat, initiated by a bold group at the Municipal Theater in February 1922 , ” closed.
The visibility and prestige achieved by Warchavchik are largely due to the inventiveness of its production. But they would be unthinkable without his inclusion in the powerful Klabin family clan after his marriage to Mina in 1922 , two years after his arrival in the country. Well educated and with the experience of her travels, Mina was much more than a refined housewife. She excelled as a landscape designer, by designing the gardens that made up the houses that her husband drew, and as the first-born of a family of women, after losing her father, she found in Warchavchik the necessary anchor to ensure the possession and expansion of her patrimony, threatened by the succession dispute between the masculine fractions of the kinship.
Not only her, but also her mother and sisters, one of them, Jenny, married to Lasar Segall. In the division of family labor, the architect was responsible for conducting business related to the significant land heritage. And although this assured Warchavchik of considerable social capital – marked by his rapid incorporation into the city’s enlightened circles and by the clientele that demanded his services – it also earned him the uncomfortable position of a relegated avant-garde artist, overshadowed by the “ Cariocas ” Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the main responsible for the internationalization of Brazilian architecture. Pressured by the constraints derived from the importance he took on in the economic life of the family, the architect who led the beginning of architectural modernism in Brazil gradually eased the inventive potential and the tension between the audacious conception and the effective conditions of its applicability. that marked the beginning of his career in the country.
