Location: Leme, Rio de Janeiro
Artist: Edgar Duvivier
Clarice Lispector, (born December 10, 1920, Chechelnyk, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died December 9, 1977, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil), novelist and short-story writer, one of Brazil’s most important literary figures, who is considered to be among the greatest women writers of the 20th century.
Escaping the Jewish Pograms that were part of life in Ukraine and other parts of the Russian Empire in the late 19th–early 20th century, Lispector at age five immigrated with her parents and two older sisters to Brazil. Lispector studied law for a time and then took up journalism.
Lispector achieved international fame with works that depict a highly personal, almost existentialist view of the human dilemma and are written in a prose style characterised by a simple vocabulary and elliptical sentence structure. She is notoriously difficult to translate. In contrast to the regional or national social concerns expressed by many of her Brazilian contemporaries, her artistic vision transcends time and place; her characters, in elemental situations of crisis, are frequently female and only incidentally modern or Brazilian.
"if you don't find any reason to be free, invent it" - Clarice Lispector
The life-size bronze statue of the Jewish writer and her dog is located in Leme, the continuation of Copacabana beach. In order to gather funds to build the statue, sculptor Edgard Duvivier created 40 miniatures that were sold to fans. The statue was unveiled in 2016 and is the first of a female artist in Rio to be memorialised in sculpture.
