About Wolney:

A civil engineer, Wolney Unes has been working with architecture heritage for the last 25 years, both with planning as well as teaching. While working with restoration of art deco buildings, his teaching activities brought him to Université Stendhal (France), University of the Pacific (USA) and Traunstein Seminary (Germany), among others. He also published various books on artistic heritage and architecture. He currently lives in Goiânia, Brazil, where he is professor at Universidade Federal de Goiás.

Motivations for South American Deco

The late industrialization in the period between the two world wars of 20th century witnessed an opportunity to gather nations and cultures worldwide, for the first time in history. The same way as the industrialization, the political reforms and the two great wars were among the first global events in human history, art deco is quite sure the first artistic movement to reach all regions, a primer for globalization. Nevertheless, wherever art déco arrived, it stimulated the presentation of local culture to the world, as an attempt to participate of the globe. On studying South American (especially Brazilian) art deco, one can note this tendency very strongly, which can then be grouped within some particular motivations, all of them returning to the departing point of similarities in the differences, be it between past and future, between here and there, or between different objects and different purposes. Thus, the will to participate of the world leads to the (1) denial of the past and a promise for a new world, as well as a (2) demonstration of local power, leading to (3) local references. The search for the new includes the work with (4) new materials and techniques, as well a (5) new organization of lines, spaces and volumes, which leads to an attempt to explore the (6) limits of typology, including that of different objects, mixing up purpose and form. Last, but not least, as the last decorative period of the beaux-arts, the art deco work includes a certain (7) ostentation in decoration. In this brief presentation, we attempt to show these three lines within South American art deco architecture.