TWENTY YEARS IN BRAZIL

9 February 2008 was a holiday in Brazil. On the beaches and in the hot summer streets the Carnival was celebrated. But it was a day when we celebrated something which has a very different value to Carnival. On this day twenty years ago the great humanistic project at Recanto Maestro began. Twenty years ago Prof. Antonio Meneghetti held a conference where he illustrated projects and concepts that have all been realized and that are still considered modern today. That was the day that Meneghetti chose the place where his project would take shape.
Three years earlier in 1985 the A.B.O. (Brazilian Ontopsychology Association) was founded, which autonomously held congresses and conferences under the direction of Dr. Alécio Vidor, who graduated at the beginning of the seventies together with Prof. Meneghetti at the PUST in Italy.
The Professor arrived in Brazil in 1988 as an honorary member of the A.B.O. He appreciated the progress the association had made and found fertile ground for the first seeds of this great humanistic thought in Brazil. As a scientist the 9 February, Meneghetti held his first conference in Brazil called “The scientific structure of Ontopsychology” at Santa Maria in the Rio Grande do Sul, before an audience of scholars and scientists and members of the A.B.O. As an artist Meneghetti held his first OntoArte exhibition in Brazil. As an entrepreneur he chose the most suitable place to host his activities, and as a maestro he began to manage all these factors with his Brazilian collaborators. After the conference Meneghetti identified a virtual and positive presence in a place thirty kilometres from Santa Maria, and at the time it was impossible to imagine what it would become. That was the day Recanto Maestro was born.
9 February 1988: that abandoned place dominated by the wilderness of nature had taken on a whole new image in the Professor’s mind. An image that took concrete form in twenty years of hard work, love and the geniality of a man who was able to bring the implicit project of the place to light.
9 February 2008: that inhospitable place is now an International Centre for Humanist Art and Culture, admired by people and institutes all over the world, a training centre for intelligent minds that continue the ontopsychological culture based on the principle that realizing one’s own individual project guarantees social development. [See the article in the journal attached to the dossier].
Recanto Maestro which is still based on its core business, the training and forming of human intelligence, is in constant growth, year after year, becoming a centre for business, residence, ecology, art and architecture, which inserted in society becomes the practical and actual exposition of the model of civilization proposed by Ontopsychology: a model centred on man who is a responsible protagonist based on a virtuality capable of self-fulfilment in the Being.
As it is the heart of the scientific, artistic and business activity in Brazil, Recanto Maestro has found its growth strengthened through the expansion of Ontopsychology over the national territory, above all in Sao Paulo, Santo Angelo and Bombinhas.
F.O.I.L. (Fostering Ontopsychological Interdisciplinary Leadership skills) is based in Sao Paulo, the economic and financial centre of Brazil, and offers congresses, conferences and seminars, publications, business consultation and higher training courses. The new FOIL offices in Sao Paulo, opened in 2007, are in one of the busiest commercial streets in the city and this has given structure and new strength to the business.
In reality business and political training based on Ontopsychological knowledge began long before FOIL was established, with Residence for businesspeople and politicians, conferences at the F.I.E.R.G.S. (Federation of Industries in the State of Rio Grande do Sul), meetings in 1995 with the President of the republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and with the Vice-president, Marco Maciel, besides those with senators, deputies, and governors. The twenty years of Ontopsychology in Brazil have always been characterized by the contributions that this science can give to public and private initiatives, and as a consequence to the development of the country.
Sao Paulo also hosts the most important OntoArte gallery in Brazil. It is situated in one of the most privileged areas, where the most important art galleries in the city can be found, and it hosts every artistic expression of OntoArte: paintings, drawings, design objects, carpets, crystals, ceramics, fashion, all with Antonio Meneghetti’s music playing in the background. On entering the gallery you leave daily life to enter the pure aesthetics of life. The OntoArte Association, which represents and promotes the OntoArte artistic current, besides Recanto Maestro also has offices in Santo Angelo, immersed in Gaucho territory, which host days of pleasure, relaxation and study surrounded by the strong red earth, the countryside and a lake of over six hectares.
The OntoArte artistic movement began through art exhibitions in the principle cities of the country – Brasilia, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. The exhibition at MASP (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo), the biggest museum in Latin America deserves a special mention. Concerts in important theatres have also been held, as well as those realized in the natural amphitheatre “Genius Loci” in Recanto Maestro and on the lake at Santo Angelo. And again, fashion shows and the inauguration of architectural works. In 1993, as President of the International school for OntoArte, Antonio Meneghetti personally conferred the honorary diploma of OntoArte on Oscar Niemeyer.
Another example of OntoArte in architecture is in Bombinhas, on Quatro Ilhas beach, called Calipso, this splendid building realized by the Professor was publicly exhibited as a work of international value at the World congress for Architecture in Istanbul, Turkey in 2005.
These twenty years in Brazil have also seen the establishment of companies and organizations that represent and perform their activities in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology. Beside FOIL, the A.B.O. and the OntoArte Association, the institutional and entrepreneurial picture is completed by the E.L.O. (Escola Latino-americana de Ontopsicologia), which promotes the study of Ontopsychological science, Ontopsicologia Editrice which deals with the publishing of books of Ontopsychological thought, AM Style which deals with fashion and unites Brazilian production with Italian skill in haute couture and the Capo Zorial hotel which hosts the events held at Recanto Maestro.
The recently opened Antonio Meneghetti Faculty is the new pearl of higher education in Brazil, where youths and adults are trained in the idea of social and existential responsibility, using Ontopsychology together with modern business and administration theories integrated with practical application.
Besides the creation of the Management Faculty, it is worth highlighting the collaboration between the Russian academic world, represented by the St. Petersburg State University which hosts the Ontopsychology Chair in the Psychology Faculty, and the Brazilian students. It is an important and prestigious collaboration, especially considering that for the love of science the Russian professors travel thousands of miles to give lessons on Brazilian territory.
This article summarizes twenty years of history and unfortunately there was not sufficient space to include many of the initiatives. The point of this summary of the last twenty years is to show that no great project happens by chance. The seeds conceived by a far-reaching mind, were thrown on fertile soil by a knowing hand, and with the willpower and the loving care of many they became history, giving life to new branches which continue towards the development of a world humanism, available to all those who wish to enjoy it in the fullness of their life. In 2008 the A.B.O. will publish the book “20 years of Ontopsychology in Brazil”, over 100 pages that gather the history of this science in Brazil.