CARACAS, VENEZUELA.- Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, just visited Fidel Castro and gave him a message by Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, a sketch of one of his works he is preparing for the island, and expressed satisfaction with the recovery of the Cuban president, convalescent from complicated intestinal surgery. Architect Oscar Niemeyer,99, is planning a sculpture of South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar to overlook Caracas. Oscar Niemeyer is best known for designing Brazil's futuristic capital. The monument would be more than 300 feet tall over the Avila Mountain. Niemeyer recently visited Chavez and offered to build this statue.

Niemeyer said, "Look, he is aiming at the United States," when showing the scale model of his work: a 100-meter high inclined triangle surrounded by a water mirror. "Some found this was an aggressive shape somehow, but for me it is justified because of the moment we are living with Venezuela leading this movement of resistance against (US President George W.) Bush," Niemeyer, a self-confessed communist, said.

"It is not a weapon. It is a movement, a vector. Architecture has to be surprising, otherwise it is useless, and particularly when the goal is expressing this Chávez' thing, that is something revolutionary, a change of wind, audacious, courageous."

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (born December 15, 1907) is a Brazilian architect who is considered one of the most important names in international modern architecture. He was a pioneer in the exploration of the constructive possibilities of reinforced concrete.

Although he was a defender of utilitarianism, his creations did not have the blocky coldness frequently criticized by post-modern critics. His buildings have forms so dynamic and curves so sensual that many admirers say that he is more monumental as a sculptor than as an architect. Some critics consider this trait to be a defect.

Oscar Niemeyer and his contribution to the construction of the city of Brasília is portrayed and somewhat parodied in the 1964 French movie L'homme de Rio (That Man From Rio), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.