RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL.-Brazilian sculptor Franz Weissmann, one of the main sculptors in Brazil, died at age 93. He was one of the last exponents of the Neo-concrete movement. Weissman was born in Knittefeld, Austria, in 1911. He went to live to Brazil in the early 1920’s and studied at the School of Fine Arts in Rio. In 1948 he acquired the Brazilian citizenship and help found the first Modern Art school in Belo Horizonte, where many famous artists studied, such as Amilcar de Castro and Mary Vieira.

Weissmann became part of the Frente movement that developed ideas of geometric abstraction that came from the avant-gard movement in Europe from the 1940’s and 1950’s. The Frente movement later got together with the Neo-Concrete movement.