Pape, Lygia (1929–2004)

Lygia Pape (b. 1929; d. 3 May 2004), Brazilian painter, illustrator, engraver. One of the forerunners of the neoconcrete movement, Pape, along with Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and other Brazilian artists, broke from both the constructivists and the concretes during the 1950s. A member of Grupo Frente from 1953 to 1955, she participated in the national exhibitions of concrete art in 1956 and 1957 and in the first neoconcrete shows in 1959. Pape favored abstraction over the imitation of nature. She began working with xylography, an engraving technique using a wooden block but quickly moved away from the two-dimensional medium and focused her attention on sculpture and other experimental formulas.

Pape is best known for her neoconcrete "book poems" and "box poems." Her Book of Creation (1959) serves as a neoconcrete standard-bearer. Geometric shapes serve as pages of a book, each one a metaphor for episodes in the Creation story. Spectators may participate in the experience and test their own creativity by manipulating the forms. Pages from the Book were placed around Rio de Janeiro, on benches, on the beach, and on rocks. Interested in working with the different possibilities of light, she put together a film project entitled Brasília. In 1967 she joined the New Brazilian Objectivity exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio, where she exhibited her "box poems" and projects incorporating live insects. In 1968 she took participatory art to its extreme with The Divider, which consisted of a huge white sheet cut with holes for people's heads. Spectators became part of the medium, their movements and voices determining the shape and structure of the piece. In 1990 her exhibit of art in metal Amazoninos won her the Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte award.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arte no Brasil, vol. 2 (1979), pp. 924-925.

Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America (1989), esp. pp. 269-271, 281.

Additional Bibliography

Brett, Guy. Brasil experimental. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa, 2005.

Mattar, Denise. Lygia Pape: Intrinsecamente anarquista. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 2003.

                                Caren A. Meghreblian