Memórias em fragmentos: o monumento a Bernardo Mascarenhas (1938), de José Otávio Corrêa Lima, no espaço urbano em Juiz de Fora (MG)

Abstract

The present work aims to study the Monument to Bernardo Mascarenhas, inaugurated in 1938 at Praça Antônio Carlos, in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. The monument, which was damaged after a storm in 2020, was created by the sculptor José Otávio Corrêa Lima and, when intact, consisted of superimposed pedestals in Art Deco style, topped by a bronze bust of Bernardo Mascarenhas and two statues representing a couple of workers. Understanding the monument as a piece of public art, whose role is to perpetuate a memory in urban space, we seek to understand it through its multiple dimensions, considering it in terms of its function of urban, artistic, and political memory. Thus, the analysis started from the monument to its relations with the surroundings of the historic nucleus of Praça Antônio Carlos and the political context of Brazil in the 1930s, covering the history of the formation of the squares in the central region of Juiz de Fora, the insertion of the monument in the trajectory of the sculptor Corrêa Lima, and a dialogue between art and politics through a more in-depth observation of the images of the workers.