Sendo Lygia Pape
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Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Sendo, the gallery’s first solo exhibition to celebrate the work of Lygia Pape (b. 1927, Nova Friburgo, Brazil; d. 2004, Rio de Janeiro). The exhibition marks one of the most important figures in Brazilian contemporary art in the year leading up to her centenary. Presented in two venues, Casa Iramaia and Barra Funda, the exhibition brings together emblematic and fundamental works from the artist’s career, alongside works rarely shown to the public. Across a range of media, including drawings, woodcuts, paintings, sculptures, and installations, the exhibition highlights the lasting importance of Pape’s work within Brazilian and international art – offering a broad view of the artist’s trajectory across five decades of radical experimentation and poetic invention.
The exhibition is co-curated by Mendes Wood DM and the Lygia Pape Project through a collaboration that ensures historical and conceptual rigor in the selection presented, strengthening the dialogue between the artist’s legacy and its contemporary relevance.
Lygia Pape, who began her career in Concretism, was one of the founders of the Neoconcrete movement in the late 1950s, signing, alongside other artists, the Neoconcrete Manifesto. Considered an inaugural milestone in contemporary art in Brazil, the text defended expressive, organic, and experiential forms in contrast to the purely geometric or prescriptive rigidity of Concretism. The movement proposed increasingly active participation by the viewer, establishing a decisive step in bringing art and life closer together. During this period, Pape explored angular forms and intersecting lines, investigating modes of interaction between geometric structures and the surrounding space.
Fundamental to the development of her artistic research, Tecelar (1957) is a series of woodcuts proposes compositions in which the geometric rigor of the forms dialogues with the organic lines revealed by the wood grain. The invented term – which can be loosely translated as “weavings”– alludes to the artist’s singular artisanal approach to engraving. Interestingly, the title of the series would only be attributed decades after its completion, when Pape recognized its importance for subsequent developments in her production.
In her constant search for a poetic dimension in art, the artist sought to “poetize” space and sensory experience, working with materials, light, and movement to create immersive situations. One of the starting points for this investigation is the Poemas Luz [Light Poems] (1956/1957), among them Sendo [Being] (1957), the work that gives the exhibition its title and which will be presented at Casa Iramaia. Composed of acrylic plates painted in vibrant colors and suspended from the ceiling so as to float in space, the work gradually reveals to the observer the word sendo, printed on one of the plates, as light falls on it.
Her poetic investigation unfolds in the creation of several bodies of work, such as her “books,” in which the artist constructs visual narratives without resorting to the written word. In Livro Noite e Dia I [Night and Day Book I] (1965), Pape develops square relief pieces that present countless formal variations, questioning the linear perception of light and time, creating tension in the pictorial plane by subverting the square through multiple combinations. A montage in black, white, and different shades of gray occupies one of the walls of the Jardins space, opening up different readings and visual relationships to the viewer. The four copies of Livro do Tempo Médio (1965) on display, formed by a geometric structure in painted wood, are emblematic works that decompose from the quadrangular volume and impose themselves on the space and time of the gallery rooms.
Two configurations in the Ttéia series, works that synthesize central aspects of Lygia Pape’s production, occupy prominent positions in Barra Funda and Casa Iramaia. These installations are constructed through the geometric arrangement of gold or silver threads in space, which delineate volumes and produce surprising visual effects. At Casa Iramaia, an installation of Ttéia 1 b (2000) creates a sense of suspension and indefiniteness from silver threads organized into cylindrical shapes that draw lines of light and shadow connecting the planes of the walls. In the Barra Funda warehouse, an unconventional configuration of the work appears in Ttéia No. 7 (1991). Formed by two pyramidal structures covered with blue pigment that settles to the floor, the installation is illuminated only by lamps of the same color suspended in a dark room. Although visually different from the wire versions, the weaving character remains present when the light concentrated at the top of the structure seems to transform into blue dust that spreads throughout the space.
Sculptures from the Amazonino series (1989/2003), including a red piece and a rare green piece, will also be on display at both exhibition venues. Mounted directly on the wall, these large iron structures project into the environment, stretching the limits of the seemingly light material. Both geometric and organic, they invite the viewer to move around the works and perceive how their forms transform as they occupy the space.
The exhibition, in addition to being an opportunity to reconnect with an artist who radically transformed the understanding of form, space, and participation in art, proposes not only a retrospective overview but also evidence of the construction of art as an embodied, sensitive, and critical experience. Instead of limiting itself to contemplation, her work calls on the viewer to participate, to sharpen their perception, and to reflect. Lygia Pape remains one of the most inventive and consistent voices in 20th and 21st century art and her work, presented here in rare breadth, reaffirms her central position in the construction of a contemporary artistic language that continues to expand horizons in Brazil and around the world.
