Lygia Clark : The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988

Published in conjunction with a major monographic retrospective of the work of Brazilian painter, sculptor and performance artist Lygia Clark, this publication presents a linear and progressive survey of the artist's groundbreaking practice. Having trained with modern masters from the late 1940s to mid-1950s, Clark was at the forefront of Constructivist and Neo-Concretist movements in Brazil and fostered the active participation of the spectator through her works. Examining Clark's output from her early abstract compositions to the `biological architectures' and `relational objects' she created late in her career, this is the most comprehensive volume on the artist available in English. Three sections based on key phases throughout her career - Abstraction, Neo-Concretism and The Abandonment of Art - examine these critical moments in Clark's production, anchor significant concepts or constellations of works that mark a definitive step in her work, and shed light on groundbreaking sets of circumstances in her life as an artist. Each section is accompanied by a selection of works by other artists that provide context for understanding the circumstances that shaped her artistic investigations, as well works by a younger generation of Brazilian artists that reflect Clark's own landmark influence. Featuring a significant selection of previously unpublished archival texts of Clark's personal writings, it is a vital source of primary documentation for twentieth-century art history scholarship.