Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, the epically inventive engineer of Brazilian psychedelia, Tropicália, deserves to live in some volcano with poodle fur wallpaper, a milkshake bathtub, corn syrup carpets and his 60’s backup band Os Mutantes perpetually playing live.
But the 65-year-old musician and his fourth wife, mellifluously listed on the deed as Flora Nair Giordano Gil Moreira, bought a new 996-square-foot condo this month with white-painted maple floors and glass-and-lacquer kitchen cabinetry, plus an in-building health center.
The two-bedroom apartment, at the A Building on East 13th Street, cost $1.34 million, according to public records.
The couple reportedly has kept a home in Rio de Janeiro, the same city where, 40 years ago, Mr. Gil and his friend Caetano Veloso were arrested and put in solitary cells after offending Brazil’s military dictatorship. (Tropicália once had its own TV program—Divine, Marvelous—and Mr. Veloso had put a gun to his head while singing a song on their Christmas show.) The two lived in London, in exile, until 1972.
Mr. Gil, who has said he’ll step down this year as minister of culture because of a polyp on his vocal chords, will have an East Village rooftop pool, plus its sun deck and cabanas, for recuperation. And his apartment has terraces, a walk-through closet in the master bedroom suite and a 23-foot-long living and dining room with open kitchen. “I have made choices marked by minimalism and taken a certain care in not to bet on adventures,” he told the Associated Press last year.
On the downside, some of the 27 comments left on The Observer’s Web site after a recent Q&A with the A Building’s young developer, Ben Shaoul, didn’t have kind words for the condo. “We have so many suits in this building after only 2 months occupancy,” one of Mr. Gil’s neighbors wrote, “due to unlivable unit conditions from massive plumbing leaks, broken appliances, deplorable workmanship, including all our floors buckling, major substitutions of high end finishes, and major shortage of square footage.”
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