Lygia Pape

Place: Nova Friburgo

Born: 1927

Death: 2004

Biography:

Lygia Pape was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, engraver, and filmmaker who played a crucial role in the Concrete movement and later co-founded the Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. Along with Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, she was an important artist in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil and pushed geometric art to include aspects of interaction and to engage with ethical and political themes.

Early Life and Career

Born on 7 April 1927 in Nova Friburgo, Brazil, Pape studied philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFTJ). She received an informal training in fine arts and studied with Fayga Ostrower at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. By the age of 20, Pape had joined the concrete art movement, which was characterized by its use of geometric shapes and emphasis on the materiality of the artwork.

The Tecelares Series

In the 1950s, Pape created her Tecelares Series, a collection of wood prints that featured planes of black ink and thin lines that revealed the white rice paper underneath. The series was originally seen as a work of Concrete art due to its precise and geometric aesthetic. However, Pape's use of "weaving" as a metaphor to evoke handiwork and a connection to Brazil's traditional and indigenous culture added an organic and expressive quality to the works.

• The Tecelares Series was characterized by its use of simple materials, crafted minimally by Pape's own hands, to incorporate expression into a work that is not expressionistic.
• Pape used a ruled edge and a compass to create the lines in Sem Título [Untitled] (1959), but there are slight variations in the width of the lines, revealing that a hand rather than a machine made the forms.
• The black ink of the woodprint's background also reveals the natural wood grain of the block print as one can see the porous marks of the wood between the incised lines on the print.

was a key aspect of Pape's work, and her involvement with this movement is evident in her Tecelares Series. The movement, which emerged in the late 1950s, rejected the pure rationalist approach of concrete art and emphasized more phenomenological art, calling for greater sensuality, color, and poetic feeling in concrete art.

Notable Works and Legacy

Pape's work can be found in several museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Tate Modern in London. Her notable works include Ttéia 1, C (1976), a large-scale installation made of golden threads that create a web-like structure. For more information on Lygia Pape's work, visit https://Wikioo.org/@/Lygia-Pape or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lygia_Pape. Pape's legacy as a pioneer of Neo-Concrete art is undeniable, and her work continues to inspire artists and art enthusiasts around the world. Her emphasis on interaction, ethics, and politics in her art has made her a key figure in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil.