In the meantime, the most effervescent moment of the consolidation of modernism occured in the early 40s, motivated by the mayor and future brazilian president and builder of the national capital city, Brasília, Juscelino Kubitschek. The politician dreamed of turning the city into a modern metropolis capable of interchange with the main urban centers in the country. His program focused on urban expansion, opening wide avenues and creating new suburbs such as the Industrial City and Pampulha, an elite bairro which turned into the postcard picture of the city, featuring one of Niemeyer's prime works.

Pampulha was designed to be a leisure and tourist area, with a church dedicated to Saint Francis de Assis, a casino, a club and dance hall. To implement this audacious project Juscelino Kubitschek invited the most illustrious brazilian architects, landscapers and artists - Niemeyer, Burle Marx, Portinari, Ceschiatti, José Pedrosa, August Zamoisky and Paulo Osir Rossi, who planned it in agreement with modern international patterns disseminated by Bauhaus and following the teachings of Le Corbusier (10).

Kubitschek also founded the Institute of Fine Arts, directed by the master Guignard, which turned into a center for the convergence of intellectuals and modern artist of the city. In this school, a group of young, innovative authors gathered, such as Amilcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, Mary Vieira, Maria Helena Andrés, Marília Giannetti, Mário Silésio, Farnese Andrade and Sara Ávila, among others. These artists knew how to assimilate and devour the lessons taught by Guignard, creating new poetic practices inserted into the concretistic, neoconcretistic, abstractionist or neosurrealist streams (11).

The mayor also sponsored, the National Exposition of Modern Art, presenting renowned brazilian artists - Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Iberê Camargo, Djanira, Goeldi, Volpi and others. A sampling was accompanied with con-ferences and debates carried out by modernist poets, among them, Oswald de Andrade, who pointed to the moment as propicious to the reavaluation of the modernist movement.

A second Modern Art Week was held in 1944, with repercussions similar to the Week of 22 in São Paulo (12). But, while the paulistana Week marked the beginning of vanguard manifestations in Brazil, the belo-horizontina Week consolidated the movement at the national level (13).

The consolidation of modernism in Belo Horizonte reveals very well the power re-lationship between Juscelino Kubischek's modernization project and the modern cultural policy of Ministro Gustavo Capanema during the New State. Indicating the emergency of a typical late modernist project, when the State utilized the innovative artistic potential to project its progressive and modernistic orientation (14).