A retrieval of the artistic memories of Belo Horizonte still reveal various national talents - Honório Esteves, Belmiro de Almeida, Alberto Delpino and Anibal Mattos - the last one also being a writer, scientist, and the articulator of the cultural movement in the early decades of the 20th century.

Near the city of the living a city of the dead was built, known as the Bonfim cemetery. Here, sculptures in marble demonstrate magnificent examples of tomb art in stone, the most outstanding being the works of the Natali brothers and João Amadeu Mucchiut (3).

The urban project for the new state capital of Minas, marked by a positive republican ideology, conceived an ideal utopian city, well ordered, illuminated and sanitized, a sign of a new era. This new order is in contrast to the old imperial order rooted in the political and cultural traditions of Ouro Preto, the former provincial capital.The building of the new capital signified, even more, a rupturing of all the vestiges of the colonial past that culminated in the total destruction of the Settlement Curral del Rei, location of the birth of Belo Horizonte, being formed during the colonial era to serve the cattle ranches of the area (4).

The destruction of this settlement took place in an authoritarion manner and the inhabitants of the village were expulsed to the suberban and rural areas, a disorderly area where small farmers and dislocated people were concentrated. Throughout, the model, modern urban city plan imposed, was an exclusive plan that segregated popular classes to the peripheral suberbs and concentrated government workers in the central area. Next to the city of the rich, another city was created - a city of workers, prostitutes and unclassified citizens, built on the edge of the ideal city, demonstrating clearly the conflicts lived by its inhabitants, who had no possibility whatever of enjoying the fruits of civilization, progress and modern life (5).

It was out of this worker's universe that the great popular artists appeared - the mechanic, Raimundo Machado, builder of the magical Présepio do Pipiripau; the servant, Ana Querino, creator of small ceramic animals; sculptors, Valentim Rosa, Ananias Elias, Francisco de Fátima and Maurino de Araújo; and painters Lorenzato, Rodelnégio and Antonio Dionísio, among others. A majority of popular artists came from the countryside, the interior or slum backgrounds, performing two or more professions, presenting an artistic repertory supported by oral tradition, and acquiring their artistic knowledge through personal perserverence, standing out as self-taught individuals (6).