Valuable artworks were vandalized when rioters protesting the electoral defeat of Brazil's former right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed three government buildings in Brasilia on Sunday.
Left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the October election and was inaugurated a week ago, condemned the invasion of public buildings in a Tweet.
Media outlets published images of authorities assessing damages and gathering evidence, while Brazil's Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, said the government plans to create a memorial "so that it never happens again."
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, "As Mulatas," 1962
(courtesy of Twitter)
Damaged works include modernist painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti's As Mulatas, on display in the presidential palace. It was punctured multiple times.
According to the Brazilian daily O Globo, rioters also vandalized works in the Supreme Court, overturning a chair designed by Jorge Zalszupin that belonged to Rosa Weber, former president of the court. A sculpture by Alfredo Ceschiatti, Justice, was covered in graffiti. And in the Chamber of Deputies, Araguaia, a stained-glass window by Marianne Peretti created in 1977, was also reportedly damaged.
The government is expected to release a full list of the damages.
Three buildings – the National Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court – UNESCO World Heritage sites designed by the late Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the 1950s for the country's then newly created capital, were also damaged in the rampage.
