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Lygia Clark was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1920 and received informal artistic training in the late 1940s by Brazilian artists Roberto Burle Marx and Zélia Ferreira Salgado in Rio de Janeiro. By 1950 she traveled to Paris to continue her artistic training with modern masters Fernand Léger and Árpád Szènes. She held her first exhibition, L. Clark-Ribeiro (1952), at the Institut Endoplastique, Paris, where she exhibited her early experiments with abstraction and constructive forms in two-dimensional works. Upon her return to Brazil later that year, she held her first solo show, Lygia Clark 1950-1952, at the Ministério da Educação, Rio de Janeiro. Recognized as an emerging artist, Clark began to participate in important regional group exhibitions, including the first Exposição Nacional de Arte Abstrata (1953) and the Bienal de São Paulo (1953).

In 1954, Clark became involved with the vanguard collective, Grupo Frente, along with her contemporaries Aluísio Carvão, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape, among others, and participated in the group’s groundbreaking exhibitions through 1956. Following the tenets of Geometric Abstraction, her work from this period embraced a rigorous representation of geometric form, bold colors, and a sense of order. She participated in other major exhibitions, such as the Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna (1956 and 1957), the first Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta (1957), and the Bienal de São Paulo (1957). Towards the end of the 1950s, Clark’s aesthetic and philosophical concerns coincided with those of Neo-Concretism, a Brazilian artistic movement established in 1959 that rejected the impersonal and objective quality of Concrete abstraction. The Neo-Concretists conceived of their works as existing between art and life and as experiences in the public realm. A founding member, Clark participated in the Exposição Neoconcreta in 1959, and created three-dimensional work that fostered the active participation of the spectator in the artwork.
From 1964 through the early 1970s, Clark resided in Paris and created a series of unconventional works paralleling her lengthy psychoanalysis with psychiatrist Pierre Fédida, which led her to conceive the idea of a therapeutic form of art. These investigations coincided with groundbreaking events in the world, such as the events of May 1968 in France and the rise of a new generation of Brazilian artists involved in movements such as Nova Objetividade (New Objectivity) and Tropícalia. Clark’s works from this period incorporate elements that stimulate the body through eyes, ears, and nose as a way of integrating the senses without privileging the visual. Her artistic investigation from this period embraced a therapeutic performance that aimed to activate subjective and corporal awareness. After 1978, during her last stages of her career, Clark solely dedicated herself to her psychoanalytic practice. She died in Rio de Janeiro in 1988.

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Lygia Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field, 1948–1958

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A pioneer of abstraction, Lygia Clark (1920–1988) is a fundamental Brazilian artist of the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition Painting as an Experimental Field, 1948-1958 allows to contemplate the first stage of her work, the crucial years of formation, an era in which she experiences between figuration and abstraction and in which she begins to define her visual language.

A pioneer of abstraction, Lygia Clark (1920–1988) is a fundamental Brazilian artist of the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition Painting

Lygia Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field, 1948–1958 | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

13€ Adults - 6.5€ Senior - 6.5€ Students

15€ Adults - 7.5€ Senior - 7.5€ Students

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