Lygia Pape (1927-2004)

The Estate of the Artist
Private Collection, São Paulo
Private Collection, New York

 

"It was this rebellious spirit in the Brazilian avant-garde of the fifties and sixties that enabled it to penetrate the ideas of European abstraction deeply without any over-respectful solemnity or feeling of inferiority. These artists could therefore aim at the universal, even the cosmic, while immersed in the local and particular. They were able to escape the typical fate of 'third world' artists that provided the metropolis with images of exotic escape. Instead, they drew on Brazilian reality to tackle some of the deepest contemporary dilemmas (...) These artists' work cannot be fitted into the schema of post-war art history as a local variation of movements centered in Europe or North America. The particular fusion they made must, as it becomes better known, change some of that history's basic tenets of interpretation. In the process, the link between Brazilian artists and certain artists in the West--especially with respect to innovations in 'the participation of the spectator'--will also become clear."

Guy Brett, A Lógica da Teia (The Logic of the Cobweb)