PEDRO NEVES’ MURAL AT PUBLIC ART FESTIVAL IN BELO HORIZONTE, MINAS GERAIS

Pedro Neves’ work “Brazil”, a painting on wood developed in 2021, has been expanded into a large-scale mural specially developed for CURA – Urban Art Circuit’s 7th edition. The house on stilts has been painted again, this time on a massive scale, to occupy the side of the Copacabana Building, in Praça Raul Soares, in the city center of Belo Horizonte.

According to the artist, the work deals with the origins of what we understand as Brazil — a nation that safeguard stories, lands and waters. It also exalts the Marajoara peoples and the residents of the former Vila dos Marmiteiros — the first favela in Minas Gerais, which extended to Barro Preto and kept popular Brazilian traditions that have disappeared.

Considered one of the biggest public art festivals in the country, CURA’s actions helped transform the city center of Belo Horizonte into an open-air museum. Created in 2017, the festival has already delivered 20 works of art on facades and gables, 16 in the downtown area of Minas Gerais’ capital city and four in the Lagoinha region, thus forming the largest collection of large-scale mural art ever made by a single Brazilian festival. In this latest edition, CURA’s theme is “earth” – present in works of art through references to clay and brick and with the aim of drawing attention to agrarian reform, land demarcations and social chasms.

More info: instagram.com/cura.art/

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*Photos of the mural: Priscila Musa