Brazil rioters trash priceless artwork in stormed capital buildings

The three vandalized buildings -- the presidential palace known as the Planalto, the Supreme Court and Congress -- are themselves treasures of modern architecture designed by Oscar Niemeyer. And each building, whose windows were mostly smashed in by the invading mob, was also full of rare furnishings or works by great Brazilian modern artists, or international works donated by other countries. Towering more than three meters (10 feet), it represents a blindfolded woman sitting with a sword on her lap. - Modernist masterpiece stabbed -The painting "Mulattoes" by Di Cavalcanti, a master of Brazilian modernism, exhibited in the Noble Hall on the third floor of the Presidential Palace, was seriously damaged. The canvas, completed in 1962 and showing four women, was "stabbed seven times" by rioters, according to the presidency.