Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat

Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat addresses the life, work, and legacy of Lina Bo Bardi, the Italo-Brazilian architect, designer, curator, museum director, writer, editor, and set designer. Arriving to Brazil in 1946 at the age of 32, Bo Bardi (1914–1992) quickly immersed herself in the country’s diverse cultures to create a new design language from the unique perspective of her experience in Brazil. Borrowing its title from Habitat magazine—which was founded by Bo Bardi and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi, and edited by them between 1950 and 1953—this exhibition casts her as a radical culture figure of the Twentieth Century who critically engaged in a process of unlearning Western knowledge through her multiple engagements in the expanded fields of cultural practice.

The exhibition is organized in three sections:

Lina Bo Bardi’s Habitat presents her intellectual development, including her critical and editorial output at the magazines Domus, Lo Stille and A—Cultura della Vita, in Italy, and Habitat, in Brazil, as well as her last book, published posthumously, titled Tempos de grossura: O design no impasse [Times of Thickness: Design at an Impasse]. This section also features her thesis Contribuição propedêutica ao ensino da teoria da arquitetura [Propedeutic Contribution for the Teaching of Architecture Theory], an important work in the theory of architecture with which she applied for a professorship at the College of Architecture of the Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP) in 1957. Her application was rejected.

From Glass House to Hut brings together Bo Bardi’s architectural and design production, including projects for houses such as the Casa de Vidro [Glass House] and the Casa do Chame-chame [Chame-Chame House], spaces for conviviality, ranging from the Espirito Santo do Cerrado Church to Sesc Pompeia, theaters and their set designs, as well as a selection of her furniture. These projects manifest her path from the modern towards the vernacular and the popular, which is reflected in the use of materials that go beyond the steel, glass, and concrete of the Casa de Vidro to incorporate the straw, wood, and clay of the hut.

Rethinking the Museum is focused on the fields of museology and curatorial practice explored by Bo Bardi from a perspective that sought new approaches to the traditional—linear, hermetic, and segmented—history of art. This section includes museum projects, such as MASP at its locations on Rua 7 de Abril and Avenida Paulista, the Museu à Beira do Oceano, the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia and the Museu de Arte Popular (the latter two, founded and directed by her), as well as curatorial projects, such as Bahia no Ibirapuera [Bahia at Ibirapuera], Nordeste [Northeast] and Caipiras, capiaus: pau-a-pique [Countryfolk, Rustics: Wattle-and-Daub], in addition to exhibition designs.

This interpretation of Bo Bardi’s production allows her body of work to be understood as a practice that crossed the boundaries of the canonical narratives of modern architecture and of the museum by incorporating other vocabularies and knowledge such as the popular, the indigenous, and the Afro-Brazilian into the fold.

Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat is co-organized by MASP, Museo Jumex, and the MCA Chicago, and will travel to Mexico City and Chicago, respectively, in 2020. In its future incarnations, the exhibition will also present a representative selection of works from the MASP Collection, displayed on the iconic glass easels designed by Bo Bardi for MASP’s Picture Gallery, along with a partial recreation of the seminal exhibition A mão do povo brasileiro [The Hand of the Brazilian People] from 1969.

Exhibition Curators: Julieta González (Artistic Director at Museo Jumex), José Esparza Chong Cuy (former Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the MCA Chicago and current Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture), and Tomás Toledo (Chief Curator at MASP).

Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat is accompanied by the publication of a major new catalogue that follows the exhibition’s sections. Edited by González, Toledo, Esparza Chong Cuy and Adriano Pedrosa, MASP’s artistic director, the book includes texts by and about Lina, as well as new contributions by Luis Castañeda, Esther da Costa Meyer, Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, Jane Hall, Antonio Risério, Guilherme Wisnik and Pedrosa, alongside new writings by the exhibition curators. 

Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat
ISBN: 978-85-310-0066-9

To view installations shots and works in the exhibition click here.

For further information about the publications, contact loja@masp.org.br

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