If Stanley Kubrick, in his classic "2001 – A Space Odyssey", had to include the presence of a city, chances are that Brasilia would  have been his choice -a kind of capital of the planet Earth in a futuristic twenty-first century. A choice that certainly was that of the French painter Jacques Benoit, age 57, who has devoted much of his career to pay tribute to architect Oscar Niemeyer's work.

In his Paris loft, Benoit still keeps some of the sixty works created over the past seventeen years, most of them vinylic paintings but also engravings and prints, all inspired by the achievements of Niemeyer, especially those of the architectures displayed in Brasilia’s Three Powers Plaza.

Born in Algiers, when Algeria was still under French rule, Benoit and his family arrived in France in the 1960’s, when the Military Coup in Brazil in 1964 brought an end to the ideological dream of Brasilia. An event that left the little boy -aged nine by then- quite undeterred, discovering (in a magazine that at the time his parents received), the black and white photographs of these strange buildings, built in the middle of nowhere, in a country that he simply was totally unaware of.
"I had no idea where Brazil could be located. But after some research in books, I discovered the country, and especially the names of Niemeyer and Kubitschek. I was intrigued by the exotism of these names. Someone calling Kubitschek… How could he be president of Brazil? And Niemeyer? What fascinating, mysterious names indeed!", recalls Benoit.

The photos of Brasilia in the press at the time were not the only reference to the new city for the French man. In some way, one could say that it was a film featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo that introduced Brasilia to the French masses.