The Italian Cultural Institute of Rio de Janeiro, in collaboration with the Consulate General, presents the photography exhibition “Italia Brutalista. L’arte del cemento” (“Brutalist Italy. The art of concrete”), on display until the end of August at the ItalianoRio Cultural Hub, a multifunctional and multimedia space designed to host thematic exhibitions, workshops and lectures. The hub is the result of a joint initiative by the Cultural Institute, the Consulate General and the Istituto Europeo di Design.
The exhibition features sixty remarkable images by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, two Italian photographers who, over more than five years of research, travelled over twenty thousand kilometres from the north to the south of the peninsula to document extraordinary works.
Their shots convey the sculptural force and narrative drama of buildings such as the Casa del Portuale in Naples, the Santuario di Monte Grisa in Trieste, the Lavatrici complex in Genoa, the cemetery of Jesi, the courthouse of Salerno, and the Palazzo del Lavoro in Turin. The buildings captured in these photographs bear witness to the distinctive Italian expression of Brutalism – an architectural aesthetic and philosophy which, from the post-war period onwards, asserted the authenticity of materials and structural honesty as moral values.
The images portray buildings notable for their stark volumes, rough surfaces and pronounced geometries: a severe yet necessary language that gave life to a genuine social manifesto – an attempt to democratise urban space for a society undergoing rapid transformation.
