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Lina Bo Bardi: Together

DAZ Exhibition “Lina Bo Bardi: Together” pays tribute to the Italian architect who moved to her adopted Brazil in 1946 leaving an impressive legacy.

This exhibition at DAZ celebrates Lina Bo Bardi’s capacity to engage with every facet of culture and to see the potential in all manner of people.

Artwork by Madelon Vriesendorp and films by Tapio Snellman recreate Lina’s work and allow a more direct experience through a form of re-enactment. Photographs of Casa de Vidro (“The Glass House”) by Ioana Marinescu show the objects (from toys and shells to art and recycled things) that Lina chose to display in the house she lived in with her husband Pietro Maria Bardi.

Lina Bo Bardi above all respected people: their energy, expression, and collective freedom. She sought to remove hierarchies and divisions, making buildings that reflected the texture and diversity of her adopted Brazil, and curating exhibitions of popular art, in which she perceived an everyday poetry. Throughout her work, which embraced architecture, furniture design, curating, writing, illustration, and stage sets, she showed a truth and integrity, living her social and creative ideas. For Lina, a handcrafted toy zebra could stand beside a De Chirico painting or a Calder mobile, and inspire a new conversation.

“Lina Bo Bardi: Together”, Daz, view of the exhibition. Photo © Ioana Marinescu

This exhibition in Berlin, which has travelled in part from London, Vienna, Basel, Paris, Stockholm and Amsterdam, reveals not only the public face of Lina Bo Bardi – the work she created in SESC Pompéia, which continues to interact with the street life of São Paolo – but her intimate world too: the life she created for herself and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi in The Glass House (1951).

“Lina Bo Bardi: Together” is a tribute to Bo Bardi’s work, and to her inclusive philosophy. It is also a re-enactment of the vitality and creative momentum that her work and writings continue to inspire, especially now that her work is being rediscovered, outside Brazil.

“Lina Bo Bardi: Together”, Daz, view of the exhibition. Photo © Schnepp Renou

Bo Bardi’s voice, as a writer and speaker, is equal in importance to her designs and buildings, and her voice can be ‘heard’ before entering the main installation as a ‘rain’ of quotes, held by paper hands (a motif often sketched by Bo Bardi), made by Madelon Vriesendorp.

The main installation explores the public face of Lina Bo Bardi. Artist Madelon Vriesendorp has conducted workshops at the Solar do Unhão, in the museum designed by Bo Bardi, and combines objects made there with her own work – inspired by Brazilian popular culture – and artefacts by Brazilian craftspeople (handcrafted toys, utensils, art and ceremonial objects) found in local markets. Tapio Snellman’s films explore the textures, colours, sounds, and life generated by SESC Pompéia within São Paulo, drawing parallels with the city of Salvador.

A timeline and film documentary on Bo Bardi, made in the 1980s, is followed by the new and concluding part of the exhibition: a look into the intimate world of The Glass House, São Paulo (now the setting for the Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi). Photographs by Ioana Marinescu and a film by Tapio Snellman, showing the objects (from toys and shells to art and recycled things) that the architect chose to display in her own environment, are accompanied by three Bowl Chairs (1951), now manufactured for the first time in a limited edition by Arper (Italy), using new technology in the spirit of Lina Bo Bardi.

Snellman’s film of The Glass House and gardens (in which Lina’s tortoise still roams) is a poignant reminder of Bo Bardi’s absence, but more importantly, of her continuing presence through the work, objects and writings she left behind. Above all, she integrated art with life, conviction with playfulness, and creativity with honesty, in what she gave and how she lived.