Lygia Clark (Belo Horizonte, 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, 1988) starts her artistic training in 1947 in Rio de Janeiro with Roberto Burle Marx and Zélia Salgado. In 1950 Clark travels to Paris, where she studies with Arpad Szènes, Dobrinsky and Léger. The artist devotes to the study of stairs and her sons' drawings, and carries out her first oil on canvas. After her first solo exhibition at Institut Endoplastique in Paris, in 1952, the artist returns to Rio de Janeiro, and takes part in an exhibition at the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Lygia Clark is a co-founder of Grupo Frente (Frente Group) in 1954: by devoting to the study of space and the materiality of rhythm she joins to Décio Vieira, Rubem Ludolf, Abraham Palatnik, João José da Costa, among others, and shows “Superfícies Moduladas, 1952-57” (Modulated Surfaces) and “Planos em Superfície Modulada, 1956-58” (Planes on Modulated Surface). This series attempted to escape from the claustrophobic space of the picture frame, and wanted to be free from the limits of such space. It is what Lygia desired as “linha-luz” (line-light) as a constructor module of the plane. Each geometric picture projects itself beyond the limits of frame, and outspreades the length of the areas. Lygia still displays the “Composições” (Compositions) series in 1954 at the Venice Bienalle – which will be repeated in 1968 when she is invited to show all her artistic trajectory in a special room.

In 1959 displays at the First Neoconcrete Art Exhibition and signs the Neoconcrete Manifesto together with Amílcar de Castro, Ferreira Gullar, Franz Weissmann, Lygia Pape, Reynaldo Jardim and Theon Spanudis. With her oeuvre Clark proposes that painting is not limited by the picture frame. Indeed, it searches for new horizons.
In “Unidades, 1959” (Units) the picture frame and “pictorial form” are confounded when one invades the other, and Clark uses the same color to blur the line between frame and canvas. Clark called it “linha orgânica” (organic line), in 1954: it is not a painting closed in itself; the surface outspreads equally on the canvas, by separating a space and then, gathering on it, coming back as a whole.

The works eager to line out. Painting results in the construction of a new support to the object. Based on the new propositions “Casulos, 1959” (Cocoons) are produced. Using metal, which allows folding the plane, it assumes the search for three-dimensional space by putting them closer to the space in the world. In 1960 Lygia develops the series “Bichos” (Animals): hinged sculptures in aluminum that made the parts of their “body” articulated. The spectator, encouraged to be participative, is invited to interact with the countless forms provided by the open structure. With this series, Clark becomes one of the pioneers in participative art in the world. With “Bichos” (Animals) she was awarded the Prize for the Best National Sculpture at the São Paulo Bienale in 1961.

The experience with maleability of hard materials converts into flexible material. Lygia Clark succeeds in reaching the soft material: hard material (wood) is put aside, goes through flexible metal in “Bichos” (Animals) and reaches the rubber in “Obra Mole, 1964” (Soft Work). The displacement of power from artist to spectator gets a new limit in “Caminhando, 1963” (Walking). Moreover the issue of “poetics of transference”, cutting the ribbon meant to be disconnected from the tradition of concrete art, since the “Unidade Tripartida, 1948-49” (Tripartite Unit) by Max Bill, icon of constructivism in Brazil, was made up symbolically by a Moebius strip. Such twisted strip shown in “Obra Mole” (Soft Work) is now cut in “Caminhando” (Walking). It was a boundary situation and a clear beginning of a new paradigm in the Brazilian Visual Arts. The object was not out of the body, but it was the “body” itself, which was of Lygia's interest. Lygia Clark's trajectory made her an atemporal artist with no well defined place inside the Art History. She and her works do not frame into categories or situations that can be easily packed; Lygia establishes a link with the life, and this new stage can be noticed in her “Objetos sensoriais, 1966-68” (Sensorial Objects): the proposition of using simple everyday objects (water, shells, rubber, seeds) indicated in Lygia's work her intention of displacing the spectator's position in the art institution, and take him to a state where the world shapes itself, under constant changing. In 1968 she shows, for the first time at the MAM-RJ, “A casa é o corpo” (The house is the body), an eight-meter installation to allow the passage of people through it so they will experience sensations of penetration, ovulation, germination and expulsion of the being. In this year, Lygia returns to Paris. The dessexualized body is shown in the series “roupa-corpo-roupa: O Eu e o Tu, 1967” (cloth-body-cloth series: The I and the You). A man and a woman entered heavy suits in plastified cloth: the man enters the woman’s suit, and she enters the man's. Cavities are found by touching each other’s pockets in the suits. The zippered pockets allow tactile discovery and recognition of the body: “to me zippers are the scars of the body”, would say the artist in her diary.

In 1972 she is invited to teach gesture communication at Sorbonne. Her classes were real collective experiences anchored in the manipulation of the senses by turning the young students into objects of their own sensations. “Arquiteturas biológicas, 1969” (Biological Architectures), “Rede de elástico, 1973” (Elastic Net), “Baba antropofágica, 1973” (Cannibalistic Slobber) and “Relaxação, 1974” (Relaxation) are proposals dated back that time. They attempt to integrate art and life through the incorporation of the other's creativity, and offer the spectator enough support to make him/her to express. In 1976 Lygia returns to Rio de Janeiro. Group experiences are then put aside, and she starts a new stage with therapeutical goals, based on the individual approach, employing the “Objetos relacionais“ (Relational Objects): upon the duality of these objects (light/heavy, soft/hard, full/empty). Based on sensory, Lygia deals with the “memory files”, fears and weaknesses of her so-called patients. She is not limited just to the aesthetic field, but mainly to the overcoming of art realms. Lygia Clark displaces out of the system in which art is found, because her attitude incorporates an exercise for life. As Lygia states:


“If the person, after doing the series of stuff I give, if she accomplishes to live a more free way of live, uses the body more sensualy, expresses herself better, loves better, eats better, all of this is of my interest even more as a result than the thing itself I have been proposed to you”

(Cf. “The World of Lygia Clark” 1973, video documentary directed by Eduardo Clark, PLUG Produções).


In 1981 Lygia gradually reduces her activities. In 1983 “Livro-Obra” is published as a limited edition of 24 books being regarded as a real open work that is accompanied by the artist's handwritten texts and manipulable structures, career from the beginning through the end of the Neoconcrete stage. In 1986 in the Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro, the IX Salão de Artes Plásticas (IX Plastic Arts Show) is held, and devotes a special room to Hélio Oiticica's and Lygia Clark’s works. The exhibition is regarded as a huge retrospective of Lygia Clark’s who was still producing her artistic works. Lygia Clark died in April 1988.