Oficina Brennand (A Ceramic and Art Museum)

This Thursday we visited a place called Oficina Brennand. This was a museum of a famous sculpture/painter named Francisco Brennand here from Recife (he was the brother of the man whose castle we went to a few weeks ago). On display at this museum was many works of his art, including hundreds of sculptures, a garden, and many of his paintings as well. Many of the works were very interesting, and a few were quite strange and even a little disturbing. For some reason he had a fascination with eggs and snakes, and many of his works reflected that. He also had a fascination with women, and exploration of the woman body (it was the paintings that reflected these things that were a little bit disturbing). The sculptures of the eggs and different animals were the strange things. It was easy to see by looking at all of this man’s work that he was a little disturbed. It’s interesting what you can learn about a person by seeing the art that they produced. The museum is where his ceramics workshop and factory used to be (it is still in working order today) and it was a large area.

This is the entrance to the museum, we had to cross this bridge. To arrive at this point we actually took a long walk on a road through the jungle, we even ran into a few monkeys in the trees hanging out. 

These four sculptures are in the yard of the museum they are called Os Comediantes (The Comedians) and they welcomed us.

This is called the Templo Central (Central Temple). The dome behind me holds the Primordial Egg, which is an emblem of immortality.

A bird's eye view of the Templo Central and the statues leading up to and surrounding it.

O Ovo Primordial (The Primordial Egg).

These are sculptures of Adam and Eve. I am pretty sure that the reason Adam has his hand over his genitals is because they believed that the forbidden fruit was sexual relations, and Adam was able to resist temptation but Eve fell. I could be wrong, but that makes sense. 

This the the sculpture hall, where there are hundreds of the artists sculptures and panels on display.

This is one of the sculptures in the sculpture hall, once again a bit strange.

Behind me is what is called the Amphitheatre, it resembles Roman baths.

Once again a strange sculpture of a snake popping out of the wall.

Here is part of the ceramic factory, which is still being used today.

Behind me in this photo is the Burle Marx Square, which is a garden that was designed by the landscape gardener Burle Marx (included in the garden are Brennand sculptures as well).

This what is referred to as the Accademia, it is a gallery over 300 of Brennand's drawings and paintings.