Painted metal
In 1960 Clark began to produce movable metal sculptures that could be modified by the spectator from three–dimensional planes to flat reliefs. She titled this series Bichos (Critters), making reference to animals and organic structures, as in her sculpture Sundial. Poetic Shelter is a key piece, leading to the conclusion of the series by privileging space over flatness and presenting construction as a form of shelter. In this work, as in her drawings, Clark liberates plane and line from their inanimate condition and recovers their vitality through movement and transformation in space.
New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions, November 21, 2007–February 25, 2008
Gallery label from Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner—Spirit Movers, November 18, 2023 – April 07, 2024
In 1959 Clark signed the Manifesto Neo-concreta (Neo-Concrete Manifesto), joining fellow Brazilian artists in calling for a greater emphasis on bodily and sensuous experience in geometric abstraction. Clark’s sculptural series of the early 1960s, called Bichos (“critters” in Portuguese) in reference to the creature-like forms of the works, was intended to be participatory; she invited spectators to touch and manipulate the hinged metal pieces, which could be transformed from flat planes into three-dimensional structures. Following the Bichos, Clark’s process grew increasingly interactive, collaborative, and experiential, emphasizing her perspective that art should be perceived with all the senses. “We do everything so automatically,” she said, “that we have forgotten the poignancy of smell, of physical anguish, of tactile sensations of all kinds.”
Provenance
The artist.
[Alvaro Clark, inherited from the artist]
? - 1997, Galeria César Aché, Río de Janeiro (archival code #582).
1997 - 2016, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, and Caracas, purchased through Galeria César Aché.
2004, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift from Patricia Phelps de Cisneros .
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Lygia Clark
Brazilian, 1920–1988 19 works onlineThe notion that the work of art was more like a body than a discrete object was a radical idea that led many Brazilian artists to embrace the viewer’s subjective experience as the main criterion in art making.
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Katarzyna Kobro, Shaping Space
Gallery 507Russian-born sculptor Katarzyna Kobro was a leader of the Polish avant-garde as well as an active participant in many international groups devoted to geometric abstraction in the 1920s and ’30s.
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