This article presents the first results of a research which aims at mapping and analyzing the construction and the consolidation of the field of the visual arts in Brasília. The whole project is divided into three significant moments of the city's history: the fifties, when the rationalist model in architecture and urban design, and concretism in the field of the arts became hegemonic; the late sixties, when conceptualism was strongly affirmed on the Brazilian art scene; and finally, the two last decades, which brought big changes to patronage and to art market strategies. The article also punctuate some theoretical and methodological remarks.
art and politics; modernization; concretism