The first major retrospective exhibition in the United States dedicated to Brazilian artist Lygia Pape (1927–2004) is currently on display at The Met Breuer. A critical figure in the development of modern Brazilian art, Pape uniquely combined geometric abstraction with notions of body, time, and space, aiming to integrate the artwork with life experience. Covering a prolific and unclassifiable career that spanned five decades, the exhibition will examine Pape’s extraordinarily rich work, manifested in various media, from sculpture, prints, and painting to installation, performance, and film.
Alongside Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape is one of the most prominent artists of her generation and was a key protagonist at a crucial moment in the history of art in Brazil. During a period of intense industrialization after World War II, European concrete and constructivist trends entered the country where figuration had been the dominant vocabulary. Pape was part of the Concrete movement (Grupo Frente) in Rio de Janeiro, reworking the legacies of geometric abstraction. She then evolved, in 1959, into the neoconcrete group, aiming to prioritize experimentation and process over any normative principle. She was one of the first to consider the integration of the artwork’s space with the viewer’s space through works that demand participation or interaction, marking a moment of rupture in 20th-century art.
The exhibition is made possible by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation and The Garcia Family Foundation and is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with the Lygia Pape Project at Met Breuer.
For more information, visit the museum’s website: www.metmuseum.org