John Lennon Statue at UnB, Brasília

The John Lennon statue at UnB (Universidade de Brasília) is a life-size bronze by sculptor Ivna Mendes de Moraes Duvivier. It stands beside the Restaurante Universitário on the Darcy Ribeiro campus in Asa Norte, Brasília. It was given to the university on 16 August 1995 after Lúcio Costa, who planned Brasília, asked for it.

Why Lúcio Costa wanted Lennon at UnB

Lennon never visited Brazil, but the country has a public statue of him on the UnB campus. In Portuguese it is usually called the Estátua de John Lennon na UnB. It is by Ivna Mendes de Moraes Duvivier, grandmother of the comedian and actor Gregório Duvivier.

The statue reached the university because of Lúcio Costa, the urban planner behind Brasília's Plano Piloto. According to Correio Braziliense, Costa saw the bronze in Rio de Janeiro and asked for it to come to UnB. His reasoning was that Brasília and the Beatles were both defining parts of the 1960s. He added that he was a dreamer too. The statue was handed over on 16 August 1995, and on Lennon's 85th birthday in October 2025 Correio Braziliense wrote about it again, as a campus landmark and as a regular target for vandals.

The years before Brasília: what sources disagree on

The statue is older than its time at UnB, but the details of its earlier life don't line up across sources.

Start with the year it was made. A post from revista piauí gives 1982. UnB's own architecture-and-art pocket guide and a campus art-walk article in SBPC's Ciência e Cultura both say 1984. Correio Braziliense, in 2025, says 1985.

Its first location is also disputed. The UnB guide says the statue was first put up in Vila Isabel, in Rio, where residents rejected it, and was then taken to Belo Horizonte, where moralists objected to it. Correio Braziliense says it was made to stand at Praia do Arpoador in Rio. Both could be true, for example if it was meant for Arpoador and ended up in Vila Isabel, but no source puts the two accounts together.

The Belo Horizonte part gets murkier. A 2024 column in Estado de Minas describes a plan for a Lennon statue in Belo Horizonte that columnist Mário Fontana and mayor Sérgio Ferrara stopped. That column says the statue on offer came from Yoko Ono, via Liverpool. It isn't clear whether this is the same sculpture as the one at UnB, so the two stories shouldn't be treated as one.

Ownership is the last open question. Ciência e Cultura says the artist herself donated the statue to UnB. Correio Braziliense says it had been bought by Antônio Amaral, the late owner of the Disco supermarket chain, while also describing the 1995 transfer as a donation. Who gave it to the university is still unclear.

Missing glasses, storage and a pink coat of paint

The statue had a rough start on campus. A 2012 post on the blog O Baú do Edu says its glasses were torn off in the first week after the 1995 handover, which suggests it was made with glasses, although some descriptions say it never had any. The same blog says the statue first stood near the campus amphitheater and was put into storage after more damage. Years later, the blog says, it was restored and set up beside the RU. No UnB source confirms the storage period or the earlier location, so treat that history as a single account.

On 8 May 2012 Correio Braziliense reported that the statue had been painted entirely pink. UnB's press office couldn't say when it happened. The university said it had ordered a special cleaning product to recover the bronze, and that the statue had been covered in other colors before. Given that record, it may not look the way it does in older photos.

The same blog mentions a plaque that connects Lúcio Costa's dream of Brasília with Lennon's "Imagine." Its exact wording has not been verified.

Finding the statue on the UnB campus

Look beside the Restaurante Universitário (RU) building on the Darcy Ribeiro campus. The green area around the RU is mapped in OpenStreetMap as a small park. The statue itself isn't mapped, so the pin on this page marks the RU building, not the exact spot where the statue stands.

UnB's FAU pocket guide lists the statue as artwork 04 on its campus art walk. The same walk covers Alfredo Ceschiatti's Minerva (1963) at the Biblioteca Central, Brecheret's Bartira, a bust of Bolívar, and murals by Athos Bulcão and Oscar Niemeyer, so you can see several works in one visit.

Some guides tell you to take the metro to a UnB station. That station doesn't exist. Brasília's Metrô-DF has no stop at UnB or anywhere in Asa Norte, and an Asa Norte extension is still only at the planning stage. Go by bus, car or taxi. Another Lennon statue in South America stands in Lima; for the rest, see the memorials list and the map.