The Guignard University of Art of Minas Gerais ( pt, Escola Guignard) is a university of fine arts in

Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

Brasil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area an ...

. It was founded on 28 February 1944 by the Brazilian painter Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896-1962) on request of

Juscelino Kubitschek Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (; 12 September 1902 – 22 August 1976), also known by his initials JK, was a prominent Brazilian politician who served as the 21st president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His term was marked by economic prosp ...

, mayor of Belo Horizonte and later

President of Brazil The president of Brazil ( pt, Presidente do Brasil), officially the president of the Federative Republic of Brazil ( pt, Presidente da República Federativa do Brasil) or simply the ''President of the Republic'', is the head of state and head o ...

. Guignard became a noted arts educator in Brazil and remained a professor at Guignard for the remainder of his life. The school is noted for its unorthodox administration and educational methods: students and teachers work together freely, and the school lacks the bureaucracy typical of other Brazilian educational institutions. Guignard offers two degrees: a degree in art education and bachelor's degree in fine arts.

History

The university traces its origin to Guignard's Escola de Belas-Artes, founded in 1943. It merge with the Department of Architecture of the Institute of Fine Arts of Belo Horizonte in 1944 to form the Escola Guignard. The period from 1944 to 1962 are regarded as the "golden age" of the school: it remained under Guignard's direction, and largely away from political and administrative problems of Brazil of the period. Guignard also benefited from its proximity to the Pampulha Project of the Brazilian architect

Oscar Niemeyer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was ...

(1907-2012), a series of modernist buildings constructed in Minas Gerais in the early 1940s. Under the new constitution of the state of Minas Gerais of 1989 the school became part of the

Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais The State University of Minas Gerais. ( pt, Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais, UEMG) is a Brazilian public university. It is the third largest university in the state of Minas Gerais, second only to the Federal University of Minas Gerais a ...

. The architect Gustavo Penna, a native of Minas Gerais, designed the current distinctive buildings of the school in the early 1990s, and completed the works by 1994.

Noted students

Guignard is noted for training numerous Brazilian artists like the contemporary

Desali Desali is a village Panchayat in Hunli-Desali Tehsil of Lower Dibang Valley district in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Location It is located on the proposed Mago-Thingbu to Vijaynagar Arunachal Pradesh Frontier Hig ...

, Priscila Resende and

Luiza Schiavo Luiza is a feminine given name, most commonly found in the Albanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian languages. People bearing the name Luiza include: * Luiza Almeida (born 1991), Brazilian dressage rider *Luiza Helena de Bairros (1953� ...

and the very relevant

Farnese de Andrade Farnese may refer to: People * House of Farnese, Italian dynasty ** Ranuccio Farnese (1390–1450) ** Pope Paul III, born Alessandro Farnese (1468–1549) ** Alessandro Farnese, Cardinal (1520–1589) ** Giulia Farnese (1474–1524), mistress o ...

(1926-1996),

Maria Helena Andrés Maria Helena Andrés (born August 2, 1922) is a Brazilian artist. She studied in the 1940s at the Guignard University of Art of Minas Gerais. Andrés' work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Seattle Art M ...

(born 1922),

Amilcar de Castro The Amilcar was a French automobile manufactured from 1921 to 1940. History Foundation and location Amilcar was founded in July 1921 by Joseph Lamy and Emile Akar. The name "Amilcar" was an imperfect anagram of the partners' names. The b ...

(1920-2002),

Mário Silésio Mario is the Italian, French, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Greek, and English form of the Latin Roman name Marius. In Croatia, the name Mario was among the most common masculine given names in the decades between 1970 and 1999, and ...

(1913-1990),

Mary Vieira Mary Vieira (1927–2001) was a Brazilian sculptor. She was born and raised in Minas Gerais. She at the studied with Alberto da Veiga Guignard in Belo Horizonte. She also studied sculpture with Franz Weissmann and Amilcar de Castro. In 1947, she e ...

(1927-2001),

Franz Weissmann Franz Josef Weissmann (September 15, 1911 – July 18, 2005) was a Brazilian sculptor born in Austria, emigrating to Brazil while he was eleven years old. Geometric shapes, like cubes and squares, are strongly featured in his works. He was one ...

(1911-2005). Also, foreign artists received formative training at Guignard, such as the

Ghanaian Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in Ghana–Ivory Coast border, the west, Burkina ...

artist

Serge Attukwei Clottey Serge Attukwei Clottey (born 1985) is a Ghanaian artist who works across installation, performance, photography and sculpture. He is the creator of Afrogallonism, an artistic concept, which he describes as 'an artistic concept to explore the re ...

References

External links

Official website
(Portuguese) {{authority control Educational institutions established in 1944 Art schools in Brazil Belo Horizonte Universities and colleges in Minas Gerais 1944 establishments in Brazil