Brennand

Francisco Brennand is Brazil’s greatest ceramic sculptor. Born in 1927 of a ceramic tile maker of Irish heritage. Francisco inherited the old tile works when his father died and started building his garden/museum. It is located in the northwest end of the city in a hilly jungle park. You drive out Av. Caxanga, a wide very straight boulevard w/ a median divider, which used to be the old trolley system. The Oficina Brennand is a complex of new and old buildings, temples, workshops, plazas, monuments, galleries, a theatre and a small restaurant. Brennand’s work is first surreal but draws heavily from Cubist, naïf/primitive, and modern schools. The grounds are covered with helmeted busts, sea serpents, long-necked horse heads, eggs birthing snakes and vultures, and satirical figures. All ceramic they are displayed on tiled walls and around bizarre fountains. You can wander for hours and not see everything. The gallery houses several hundred of his drawings and paintings the majority of which reflect his interest in prostitutes. As you drive up to the site you pass through an area of small hourly hotels with names like Love Nest, Casa de Amour and Ninja Motel [???]. A room can be had for 8.90 Reals or about $5.00 for an hour. I suspect Francisco was not at a loss for subjects. The painting and drawings of the girls are very erotic and reminiscent of Grosz, Picasso, Degas and Toulouse Lautrec.
We had another lounge act tonight, kind of Liberace without hair and hetero jokes. He wasn’t bad but he did use the same joke as the guy the other night. And they know each other and work together sometimes. We cross the equator tomorrow and I will no longer be a pollywog. Night, night.