Pinakotheke Cultural de São Paulo brings an unprecedented exhibition by Lygia Clark

Exhibition will be open to the public until January 15, 2022

Published on 04/12/2021 - 09:46 By Luiz Malavolta - Repórter da TV Brasil - São Paulo

Lygia Clark was one of the most important Brazilian artists of the 20th century in Brazil and abroad. For the specialized critics of her time and the current “experts” in the area, Lygia thought of art "not as a finished work, but as a stimulus to perception, as an experiential proposal in search of the fullness of being, taking place in the other and through him ”, as defined by the critic Sérgio Milliet.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Lygia Clark Cultural Association

For Milliet, one of the most respected intellectuals in the country of all times, Lygia Clark made innovative and dynamic works, stimulating interactive creations, at a time when this word was not even used as often as it is today.

Lygia died on April 25, 1988, at the age of 67. In commemoration of the centenary of its birth, Pinakotheke Cultural de São Paulo, in collaboration with Associação Cultural Lygia Clark, opened the exhibition Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos . The show will be open to the public until January 15, 2022.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Lygia Clark Cultural Association

The exhibition is curated by Max Perlingeiro, director of Pinakotheke Cultural Rio de Janeiro and Pinakotheke São Paulo. The show brings together approximately 100 works by the artist, including paintings, drawings, engravings, animals, climbing frames (a model of structure intended for large-scale constructions, which are developed in stages of concreting and where the use of scaffolding is not feasible), work mole, cocoon, relational objects, photographs and documents. According to the curator, almost all of these works are unpublished to the Brazilian public.

One of them is the Bichos collection. It belongs to the estate of English critic Guy Brett, who died in February 2021, at the age of 78. He was a great friend of Lygia Clark, ever since they met, at the Brazilian artist's solo show, at Signals Gallery, in London, in 1965.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Vicente de Mello

Unpublished

Other unpublished works in São Paulo are the so-called formal works, dated from 1943 to 1952, such as the series Escadas” (1947). Also unique are the relational objectives works, made between 1968 and 1973. They were brought together in the same São Paulo exhibition. For people who know the artist's trajectory, this is her most "radical" experiment in her entire trajectory. Perlingeiro informs that these works have never been seen by the public, such as the Modulated Surface and Modulated Space series, also available at Pinakotheke.

According to the curator, this exhibition can be considered historic, due to the originality of the works and for proposing to the public a dip in the development of her thinking, which is considered one of the most important artists of the last century, which has already won exhibitions in prestigious museums such as the MoMA in New York, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, among many other institutions.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Vicente de Mello

Perlingeiro states that the show follows a chronology, divided into 17 conceptual orders that make up his career as an artist: Escadas (1947), Kleemania (1952), Quebra da Moldura (1954), Organic Line (1954), Art/Architecture ( 1955), Modulated surface (1955-1956), Modulated surface planes Series A (1957), Modulated surface planes Series B (1958), Modulated space (1958), Unit (1958), Linear egg (1958), Counter relief (1959), Casulo (1959), Bicho (1960-1964), Obra mole (1964), Trepante (1965) and Relational objects (1968-1973).

The public will be able to follow wall texts written by the critic Paulo Herkenhoff, which help the understanding and evolution of the artist's thinking and her creations. According to the curator, the exhibition also brings other treasures, such as the recreation, from a photograph, of the assembly of 7 Units , at the Neoconcreta Exhibition, in 1958, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, where she appears seated in a chair designed by Abraham Palatnik.

The critic is considered one of the pioneers of the so-called kinetic art in Brazil, which is related to science and technology. In this work by Lygia, the works and the chair are in exactly the same position as the photograph, which can be seen in the exhibition and in the accompanying book.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Vicente de Mello

Animation

The Pinakotheke Cultural de São Paulo also brings an animation of the photo essay made by Alécio de Andrade (1938-2003) of the Biological Architectures II performance, which Lygia Clark created in 1969 at the Hôtel d'Aumont, in Paris. The animation was made by Fabrício Marques, and the organ is by Gabriel Pinheiro.

On alternate days, the public can see the films Memória do corpo (1984), by Mário Carneiro, 30', produced by Solange Padilha and videography by Waltercio Caldas, who recorded the last proposal designed by the artist, the Estruturação do Self ; and O mundo de Lygia Clark (1973), by Eduardo Clark, with photography by David Drew Zingg and Antonio Guerreiro, and music by Naná Vasconcelos.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 anos, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo
Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years old, Pinakotheke Cultural São Paulo - Jaime Acioli/Reserved rights

A special room was set up to display the video installation DSÍ – embodyment (2021), 8', three cameras with three different monitors, recorded by Carolyna Aguiar's performance, and directed by Leticia Monte and Ana Vitória. In this video installation, the viewer is invited to live the experience of the inaugural states of the fragmented body in its pulsating perspective of life and death. “Here, the body struggles to become what it is, continually unraveling and retreating into an incessant immemorial struggle-dance, a place of voids, which Lygia Clark insists that we revisit.”

Visitors to the exhibition can obtain a bilingual book - in Portuguese and English - also under the title Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years . The book has 316 pages and features unpublished critical texts, images and information about the works, a selection of personal correspondence between Lygia and artist and intellectual friends, and an updated summary chronology.

Biography

Lygia Clark was born Lygia Pimentel Lins. She was from Belo Horizonte from Minas Gerais. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1988, at the age of 67. She adopted the surname Clark from her companion Aluísio Clark Ribeiro, with whom she had three children. Throughout his career, he proposed to explain art to the spectator and demystify what he was doing. She developed all her natural talent alongside important intellectuals such as Burle Marx, the French cubist painter Jules-Fernand-Henri Léger, the Hungarian-French painter, illustrator, draftsman and printmaker Árpád Szenes, and the Brazilian Ivan Ferreira Serpa.

Between 1970 and 1976. Lygia lived in Paris, where she taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts St. Charles, at the University of Sorbonne. When she returned to Brazil in 1976, Lygia Clark began to study art as a therapeutic possibility. That's when he started talking about sensory art, very close to psychoanalysis. In the 1980s, his work gained international recognition and several exhibitions were held in various capitals around the world.

Service

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) 100 years

Location: Pinakotheke São Paulo

200 Nelson Hungary Street – Real Parque - Morumbi

Until January 15, 2022

Monday to Friday – from 10 am to 7 pm

Saturdays – from 10 am to 4 pm

Text translated using artificial intelligence.

Edition: Maria Claudia

Latest news