Draw to design and design to draw. "Lina Bo Bardi Drawing" exhibition at Fundació Joan Miró

Description of project by La Fundació Joan Miró

Throughout his life, Lina Bo Bardi captured his imaginative visions and creative processes in numerous sketches, so much so that they have managed to keep more than six thousand sketches and drawings in their personal files, currently housed in the Lina Bo Institute. PM Bardi, in São Paulo, Brazil. This exhibition sheds light on a concise and careful selection of a hundred of them, in charge of the commissioner Zeuler Rocha Lima. Lina Bo Bardi draws is a constellation of images that invites the visitor to discover the relevance of drawing in the trajectory of this singular architect, and to establish free associations between the multiple facets of his work. The drawings, made with different techniques, reveal, at the same time, his wide conception of design and architecture, accessible to everyone, in which he mixes different artistic sensibilities, nourished directly from nature and everyday life.

The exhibition Lina Bo Bardi draws is divided into four thematic areas: space, understood as a setting for living and for seeing and observing objects and small everyday realities; the plants like attrezzo, and the people, authentic protagonists of these spaces.
 

"His drawings are very personal. They are an emotional exercise and not just an intellectual practice [...]; it is evident that, in his hands, the drawing was a search for knowledge and intimacy. That it was an act of love And, like all forms of love, it was full of challenges, contradictions and ambiguities ».

«Through drawing, he observed, imagined and aspired to understand and transform reality, both externally and internally. It projected a better world to live, for herself and for others».

-Rocha Lima

The exhibition begins with the area dedicated to the imaginary of the natural world in Lina Bo Bardi's drawings. The plants were present in Bo Bardi's drawings from his childhood, as a symbol of the cycles of life and nature. In 1956, when visiting Barcelona, ​​Bo Bardi discovered the work of Antoni Gaudí, whose interest in plants and organic forms forever transformed the language of the Italo-Brazilian architect.

The representation of people was a constant theme in his drawings. The sample He goes on to address this aspect through a set of pieces in which the human body appears not only as a physical object or reference, but also as a way of being in the world, individually and collectively. 
 

"Lina Bo Bardi built an unusual image of the relationships of people with each other, with space, architecture and cities, nature, as well as with the objects of daily life. Bo Bardi produced some drawings and sketches [...] that are among those that are rarely associated with the mainstream architects of the 20th century. Bo Bardi painted joy and humanity".

-Rocha Lima

Through the continued exercise of the drawing, Lina Bo Bardi created an original visual culture that is the object of the next scope of the exhibition. Thanks to his editorial experience, Bo Bardi learned how to use images to promote values ​​and to generate innovative ways of seeing. After settling in Brazil in 1946, he articulated this knowledge in the field of graphic design with
popular culture, its recognition of spontaneous forms of expression and the different traditions in which it participated.

The whole of his work conveys his conviction that life should be at the center of the way of conceiving objects, buildings and spaces, as the last area of ​​the exhibition depicts. "His drawings," the curator says, "remind us that daily life is polyhedral and full of possibilities, a place to work and dream, for individual and social existence." The exhibition concludes with the screening of the video Lina Bo Bardi, curator, that Zeuler Rocha Lima himself originally produced for the Lina Bo Bardi 100 exhibition at the Architekturmuseum in Munich, in 2014, on the occasion of the centenary of the architect's birth.
 

"When we design, even as students, it is important that our building has a purpose and includes the connotation of use. It is necessary that the work does not fall from the sky on its inhabitants, but that it expresses its needs [...]. In short, one should always pursue the ideal and decent object project, which could also be defined with the old term "beautiful".

-Lina Bo Bardi

To underline the impact of Gaudí's work in the language of Lina Bo Bardi, the foyer of the Fundació Joan Miró hosts in parallel a selection of images from the photographic series that Joaquim Gomis dedicated to Gaudí's architecture. Also, during the exhibition you can admire, in the participatory space, the sketches of the original design of the exhibition, also by Zeuler Rocha Lima, which constitute a tribute to the particular spirit that Lina Bo Bardi he printed his initiatives as curator and his exhibition designs. Complete the project a specific program of activities and a paper signed by the Commissioner himself, an international expert on the figure of Bo Bardi, and co-published by the Joan Miró Foundation and Princeton University Press for English edition.

Lina Bo Bardi draws the story of a woman who was guided by ethics and modesty as an artist, and the architect who based her language on the principle of simplification. A principle he shares with Joan Miró. Both artists understood drawing as a daily practice that neither of them ever abandoned. 
 

"Given the loss of prominence of the skill in hand drawing in the arts in general and in practice In particular, the drawings of Lina Bo Bardi continue to be an ever refreshing confirmation of the permanent importance and value of free and authentic thought and of skilled and educated hands ».

Zeuler Rocha Lima