Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988

From Concrete art to relational objects: the artistic paths of Lygia Clark

Published in conjunction with a major retrospective of the work of Brazilian painter, sculptor and performance artist Lygia Clark, this publication presents a linear and progressive survey of the artist's groundbreaking practice. Having trained with modern masters from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, Clark was at the forefront of Constructivist and Neo-Concretist movements in Brazil and fostered the active participation of the spectator through her works. Examining Clark's output from her early abstract compositions to the "biological architectures" and "relational objects" she created late in her career, this is the most comprehensive volume on the artist available in English. Three sections based on key phases throughout her career--Abstraction, Neo-Concretism and The Abandonment of Art--examine these critical moments in Clark's production, anchor significant concepts or constellations of works that mark a definitive step in her work, and shed light on circumstances in her life as an artist. Featuring a significant selection of previously unpublished archival texts of Clark's personal writings, it is a vital source of primary documentation for twentieth-century art history scholarship.

Lygia Clark (1920-1988) trained in Rio de Janeiro and Paris from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. From the late 1960s through the 1970s she created a series of unconventional artworks in parallel to a lengthy psychoanalytic therapy, leading her to develop a series of therapeutic propositions grounded in art. Clark has become a major reference for contemporary artists dealing with the limits of conventional forms of art.

Author: Lygia Clark
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Museum of Modern Art
Published: 10/31/2014
Pages: 336
Weight: 5.3lbs
Size: 12.20h x 9.80w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780870708909

About the Author

Cornelia Butler is Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Luis Perez-Oramas is the Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art for the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art.

Sergio Bessa is the director of curatorial and education programs at the Bronx Museum, and a teacher of Museum Education at Columbia University.

Eleonora Fabiao is a performer/performance theorist and Associate Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Briony Fer is a British art historian, curator and Professor of History of Art at University College London.

Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães has curated for the Museum of Modern Art and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery.

Andre Lepecki is Associate Professor at the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is a writer and curator working mainly on performance studies, choreography and dramaturgy.

Zeuler Lima is an architect and associate professor of history, theory and design at the School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.