Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920 Belo Horizonte – 1988 Rio de Janeiro) radically redefined the concept of art and is one of the most important art practitioners in South America. One of the leading figures in the Neoconcretismo movement established in Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she encouraged a bodily experience of art that involves people in the work and makes them part of it. With installations that visitors could activate, walk through and touch, she challenged conventional notions of sculpture and expanded art into a holistic and sensual experience.

Despite the pre-eminence of Abstract Expressionism and later Pop Art, Clark was remarkably successful in asserting her unconventional ideas during Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 – a time when artistic freedom was under threat. In this exhibition, the first retrospective in a German-speaking country, we celebrate her unconventional and still highly exciting historical work. She herself said: ‘For me, making art is about developing as a person, which is the most important thing of all. Art should not seek to emulate a name or any kind of concept.’ Today, in an age of digital transformation and globalization mingled with self-alienation, her oeuvre speaks more than ever to all the senses.

A retrospective in cooperation with the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in collaboration with the Associação Cultural Lygia Clark in Rio de Janeiro.

The exhibition is accompanied by a separate presentation in collaboration with Museum Haus Konstruktiv, which focuses on links between Switzerland and Brazil and, in particular, the influence of the Zurich Concrete artist Max Bill on Lygia Clark and her generation, and their emancipation from him.

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Ill.: Lygia Clark, The I and the You: Clothing – Body – Clothing series, 1967, Cultural Association ‘The World of Lygia Clark’, © The estate of Lygia Clark