Os Candangos, Bronze monument in Praça dos Três Poderes, Brasília, Brazil
Os Candangos is an eight-meter bronze sculpture in the Three Powers Plaza showing two powerful figures standing together. The statue depicts the construction workers who built Brasília from the ground up and symbolizes their collective labor.
Invited by architect Oscar Niemeyer, Bruno Giorgi made the bronze in 1959, his first work in the city, after a maquette shown at the São Paulo Biennial in 1957. He chose two embracing figures to honour the pioneers who built Brasília, and called it Os Guerreiros; the workers themselves used the name Os Candangos before the inauguration. UNESCO recognised it in 1987, and Zeno Zani led a restoration.
The name Candangos, according to art professor Olívio Guedes, comes from Angola in Africa. The workers building Brasília adopted it for the sculpture before its inauguration, and it replaced the original title Os Guerreiros. The work honors the pioneers who built the city.
The monument stands in front of the Planalto Palace in the open air on the Three Powers Plaza and is easy to reach from the main routes serving the area. The plaza itself is flat and spacious, allowing comfortable viewing and photography from all angles.
The two figures were sculpted without idealized details, showing the raw, serious nature of heavy physical labor. Modern sculptor Giorgi avoided sentimentality and instead created an honest memorial for people whose contribution is often overlooked.
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