ITALY: CARRIERO FOUNDATION PRESENTS AN INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITION OF BRAZILIAN ARTIST LYGIA PAPE
The Fondazione Carriero (Milan, Italy) inaugurates an individual exhibition of the Brazilian artist Lygia Pape. Under the curatorship of Francesco Stocchi, Lygia Pape is the first large-scale individual exhibition in an Italian institution. The exhibition, produced in collaboration with Estate Projeto Lygia Pape, will remain in the foundation until July 21st.
Lygia Pape (Rio de Janeiro, 1927-2004) meant, within the history of modern and contemporary art, one of the most relevant figures of the Brazilian neoconcretism emerged at the end of the 50s. Fifteen years after her death, the Fondazione Carriero proposes this retrospective that aims to embrace the entire production of the artist through 1952 to 2000 period. The career of Pape was characterized by the multiplicity of languages: from sculpture, drawing and painting, to audiovisual pieces and installations, the oeuvre constituted by the Brazilian artist had an undeniable influence on the Latin American scene of the late twentieth century and has, even today, a remarkable attribution in contemporary productions.
The retrospective exhibited in the Italian foundation reveals, precisely, the versatility and constant reinvention of Pape’s language. But that isn’t all. The artworks are exhibited in such a way that they reveal the flashes of European modernism within her work. Assiduous studious of art, Pape took various elements from European art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and merged with Brazilian current movements. An example of this is Los Tecelares series where the artworks reveal a miscegenation between Brazilian popular tradition and constructivist research of European origin.
Among others of the most recognized pieces at the exhibition, Livro Noite e Dia, Livro da Criação and the famous Tteia 1 installation are exhibited. At Tteia 1 Pape condenses the elements and procedures of its own language: the dialogue between materials, the third dimension and the self-reinterpretation as a reinvention engine.
Considered by many as an experimental artist, the exhibition Lygia Pape also hints at that theoretical-ludic aspect so characteristic of the artist. Stocchi’s curatorship ilsutrates perfectly how each one of the projects is a response or, an evolutionary consequence, of the previous works. And this is not a minor issue, it demonstrates the ability that the Brazilian artist had to accumulate knowledge, both technical and theoretical, and make it a work in constant self-improvement.
Organized along the three floors of the foundation, Lygia Pape is presented to the viewer as a spiral that goes beyond Pape’s production and the exhibition hall. Lygia Pape's legacy is almost instructive: a toolbox that, through spontaneity as a procedure allows deconstructing the coercive schemes of the present.
