PROFUSION OF DEATH AND FORMAL FREEDOM IN BRAZILIANS NECROPOLISES

Abstract

In his book Cidades dos vivos (2002), Renato Cymbalista concludes that São Paulo's tomb architecture, until 1970, was not elaborated in away completely unrelated to the elite’s representations of that time. Partially free to conceive the final shape of the tombs, the"teams" responsible for the projects ”“ the dead's family and the cemetery mason”“built heterogeneous and fragmented landscapes: an authentic profusion of forms, materials, and colors, where least privileged people soughtto mirror themselves in the high society. Having Cymbalista'sbookas the main reference, the present article aims to examine, ingeneral, the extent to which the Brazilian tomb architecture was able to produce a formal result free of extern al impositions ”“ its own and"autentically"national tomb architecture.