Lygia Clark

Lygia Clark - As a mother of three, Lygia Clark became an artist

Lygia Clark was born on 23 October 1920 as Lygia Pimentel Lins in Belo Horizonte in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The daughter of an aristocratic family, she moved in the upper echelons of society and married a wealthy man at the age of 18. Only in 1947, following the birth of her three children, did she decide to become an artist. She began studying at the age of 27 in Rio de Janeiro with the landscape architect and painter Roberto Burle Marx. Convinced she had chosen the right path, Lygia Clark went in 1950 to Paris to hone her shills with Árpád Szenes, Isaac Dobrinsky and Fernand Léger. Her early work mirrored the artistic current of the time, breathing the spirit of constructivism. Her paintings were mostly in monochrome, exclusively in black, white and grey. She later widened her spectrum to include selected colours. 

The audience is called upon to co-create

Upon returning to her native Brazil, Lygia Clark became co-founder and one of the most significant members of the Neoconcrete artist group, along with Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Ferreira Gullar. Around this time, Clark began to ponder her relationship with art and to question her hitherto approach. She eventually came to see art no longer as an object, but as an act, an interactive event. Against this background, in the early 1960s she created her Bichos, or critters: a series of moveable aluminium constructions, for which she won the Sculpture Prize at the São Paolo Biennale. Having previously worked exclusively as a painter and sculptor, the artist no longer wanted to allow her audience simple passive contemplation, but instead demanded an active participation in the reception of her work. According to the will of the artist, the reception of her art should become a creative act itself. 

Coup in Brazil, professorship in Paris

With her innovative approach of urging her audience to interact with her artworks, Lygia Clark proved a challenge for many museums and galleries where it is taken for granted that objects on display are not allowed to be touched. But it wasn’t only this self-will that made her life as an artist difficult: the unstable political situation in her homeland, with coups and resulting military dictatorship, forced her into exile in Paris. There she celebrated further successes and was appointed a professorship at the Sorbonne from 1972 to 1976. She subsequently refrained from artistic activity for almost a decade and instead dedicated herself to therapeutic practices. In her efforts to make art an experience for the recipient, Lygia Clark did not target external effects and mass appeal, but on the contrary, tried to provoke an internal process within the individual. The artist succeeded with her work in adding a spiritual and physical dimension to her art. 

Lygia Clark died of a heart attack on 25 April 1988 in Rio de Janeiro.