Lygia Clark facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lygia Clark
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Clark (left) and Fayga Ostrower
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| Born |
Lygia Pimentel Lins
5 October 1920 |
| Died | 25 April 1988 (aged 67) |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Known for | Painting, Installation art |
| Movement | Neo-Concrete Movement |
Lygia Pimentel Lins (born October 23, 1920 – died April 25, 1988), known as Lygia Clark, was a famous Brazilian artist. She was best known for her unique painting and installation work.
Clark was often connected to important art movements in Brazil. These included the Constructivist movements and the Tropicalia movement. She also helped start the Neo-Concrete movement. She founded it with other Brazilian artists like Amilcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, Lygia Pape, and poet Ferreira Gullar.
Starting in 1960, Clark found new ways for people to interact with her art. She called these people "participants." Her art explored the connection between what's inside and outside, and how we relate to the world around us.
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Lygia Clark's Life
Lygia Clark was born in 1920 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In 1938, she married Aluízio Clark Riberio and moved to Rio de Janeiro. There, she had three children between 1941 and 1945.
In 1947, she began studying painting with Roberto Burle Marx, a Brazilian landscape artist. This is when she truly became an artist. From 1950 to 1952, she continued her studies in Paris with artists like Isaac Dobrinsky and Fernand Léger.
In 1953, Clark became a founding member of the Frente group of artists in Rio. In 1957, she took part in Rio de Janeiro's first National Concrete Art Exhibition.
Becoming a Neo-Concretist
Clark quickly became a key figure in the Neo-Concrete movement. In 1959, this group wrote a statement saying that abstract art should be more about feelings and less about strict rules.
In 1960, she started making her famous Bichos (Critters). These were hinged objects that could be moved and changed into many shapes by the viewer. In 1964, she began creating "propositions." These were ideas that anyone could try using everyday items like paper or plastic bags. After 1966, Clark said she had stopped making traditional art.
Time in Paris
During a time of political change in Brazil, Clark moved to Paris. In the 1970s, she taught art classes at the Sorbonne. While there, Clark also explored how people experience art through their senses. Her art became a multi-sensory experience where the viewer became an active participant.
From 1979 to 1988, Clark started using her art objects in interactive sessions to help people. This was a form of art therapy. In 1977, Clark returned to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She passed away from a heart attack in her home in 1988.
What Influenced Lygia Clark's Art
Clark's early art was influenced by the Constructivist movement. This included geometric abstract art from Europe, like the work of Max Bill. However, she soon moved away from the very strict and logical style of much abstract art.
Her early work also showed her interest in how the mind works. She was inspired by the ideas of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His ideas about how our bodies and minds connect with the world helped her create her groundbreaking art in the 1960s. Later, her more complete works showed influences from her experiences with people facing mental health challenges. Clark herself was in therapy, and her art explored the connection between art, therapy, and life.
Nostalgia of the Body
In 1964, Clark started her Nostalgia of the Body series. Her goal was to stop making art objects and instead create art that focused on the senses. These works relied on each participant's unique experience.
These pieces explored how opposites can exist together, like inside and outside, or male and female. For example, her 1966 work Diálogo de mãos (Dialogue of Hands) connected two people's hands with a stretchy Möbius strip. Also in 1966, Clark made Pedra e ar (Stone and Air). This piece had a small stone on top of a plastic bag filled with air. When people pressed the bag, the stone would "dance."
Art and the Senses
Art expert Guy Brett noted that Clark "made many tools to turn what we see into an awareness of the body." Clark's later works focused a lot on senses we don't always think about: touch, hearing, and smell.
In her 1966 work, Breathe With Me, Clark shaped a rubber tube into a circle. She invited people to hold the tube near their ear. Participants could hear the sound of air moving in and out of the tube. This created a unique sensory experience for each person.
Lygia Clark and Tropicália
Clark is one of the most recognized artists connected to the Tropicália movement. She explored how people's senses and minds would interact with her artwork.
A great example of Clark's interest in human interaction is her 1967 piece O eu e o tu (The I and the You). This artwork used two industrial rubber suits joined by a cord, like an umbilical cord. The people wearing the suits would be connected but unable to see each other. Clark said about her pieces, "What's important is the act of doing in the present; the artist is dissolved into the world."
How Lygia Clark's Art Changed
Early in her career, Clark focused on making small paintings using only black, gray, and white. In the 1960s, her work became more about ideas. She started using soft objects that people could touch and change. Later, she helped create the Neo-Concrete movement with fellow Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica.
The Neo-Concrete Movement
In the late 1950s, Clark and some other artists left the Concrete group to start the Neo-Concrete movement. They published their ideas in 1959.
Hélio Oiticica joined the group the next year. The Neo-Concretists believed that art was about a person's experience in real time and space. Unlike some artists in the U.S. who had similar ideas, Clark and the Neo-Concretists thought "real space" meant something lively and natural. Clark wrote that an artwork should not be seen as a "machine" or an "object." Instead, it should be "an almost-body" that only becomes complete when people interact with it.
Clark and Oiticica combined modern European geometric abstract art with Brazilian culture. The Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement got some of its ideas from Max Bill. He was the director of the Ulm School of Design in Germany in the early 1950s.
The Neo-Concretists wanted to use art to "express complex human realities." They soon began making artworks that people could physically interact with. An example is Clark's Bichos (Critters) from 1960–63. These were clever arrangements of hinged metal plates that could fold flat or be opened into three dimensions and moved into many shapes. By interacting with these works, people were meant to become more aware of their bodies and their existence. The viewer's participation was key for the artwork to be complete. In fact, Clark and Oiticica called the audience "participants" instead of viewers. Clark described the interaction between a viewer and a Bicho as a conversation between two living things.
Later Works and Therapy
After 1963, Clark's art could not exist without a participant's experience. Her art became an interactive experience. She believed that a viewer, or "participant," played an active and important role in the art world. In most museums, artworks are on stands or walls. But Clark's works were meant to be handled and changed by the viewer. She believed art should be a multi-sensory experience, not just something enjoyed with the eyes. She once wrote, "We are the proposers: our proposition is that of dialogue. Alone we do not exist. We are at your mercy." She also said, "We are the proposers: we have buried the work of art as such and we call upon you so that thought may survive through your action."
One of her most famous interactive art pieces is Baba Antropofágica. This piece was inspired by a dream Clark had about a substance coming out of her mouth. She saw this as a way of sharing a past experience that others could then "take in."
Later in her career, Clark focused more on art therapy and less on creating new art objects. When she returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1976, Clark's therapy work focused on memories of difficult experiences. She wanted to understand why certain objects brought back strong memories for people she worked with. This helped her in her therapy sessions. Depending on the person, the sessions could be short or long. Treatment happened through the connection between an object and how the participant understood its meaning.
Where to See Lygia Clark's Art
Lygia Clark's work is kept in art collections all over the world. Some of these include:
- MoMA (New York)
- Tate Modern (London)
- the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston)
- MAM (Rio de Janeiro)
- Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid)
- Walker Art Center (Minneapolis)
- Centre Pompidou (Paris)
Art Market
In 2014, at Sotheby's, one of Clark's folding aluminum sculptures, Bicho-Em-Si-Md (No. IV) (1960), sold for $1.2 million. This was twice what experts expected it to sell for.
See also
In Spanish: Lygia Clark para niños
