The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho (born 1907) was the leading exponent of the International Style in Latin America. He is especially identified with the public buildings of Brasilia, Brazil's new capital.

Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho was born on Dec. 15, 1907, in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a well-to-do family. He attended the National School of Fine Arts (1930-1934), and for many years he regarded his work more as a sport than a profession. Both his brilliance and his much decried haste can be attributed to this attitude, although after the mid-1950s he began to take himself and his work more seriously.

In 1936 Niemeyer began work with a team of young Brazilians on a project directed by Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect, to design a building to house the Ministry of Education (executed 1937-1942). They experimented with several bold ideas, erecting part of the structure on pillars...