Two Candangos Monument

Standing in the Three Powers Plaza in Brasília, this bronze sculpture honors the candangos, the laborers who migrated from across Brazil to build the new capital in the late 1950s. Created by Bruno Giorgi and installed in 1959, it shows two elongated stylized figures side by side holding tools, their forms stretched upward in a gesture of collective effort. The workers came largely from the poor northeast, and many settled permanently in the region. Set amid Niemeyer's government buildings, it honors the human labor behind the project.