This PhD thesis analyzes from a social-historical point of view, the whole work by Carlos da Silva Prado (1908Prado ( -1992, better known as Carlos Prado, an active painter of the modernism's scenario, architect and functional architecture theorist between 1930 to 1990. Presenting a wide variety of techniques, styles and themes, the popular or folk art, as well as the social art period, including the social art of urban point of view creating a metropolis panorama: at the same time modern and with serious infrastructure problems, such as transportation and housing for lower economic classes, showing the differences between progress and opposite situations, rich and poor. In our hypothesis, Carlos Prado was a São Paulo modernist painter, when adopted the popular and social themes, printing in his works an idealized view of the past from an aristocrat point of view, which absorbed the "brazilianness" idea by Mário de Andrade and Sérgio Milliet. He stood back the "arts system" in the 1960s due to the attitude he took to avoid interaction with people since he did not agree with the capitalism world rules, the period of time was incredibly under the rules of supply and demand. We have a complementary hypothesis. Prado was idealized the past, created an utopian way, while modernity seemed to ignore human values, encouraging consumerism, the empire of commodity fetishism and money.