From Friday, 23 May 2025, the Neue Nationalgalerie is presenting the first retrospective of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) in Germany. With around 150 works, the comprehensive exhibition in the upper exhibition hall presents her entire artistic oeuvre from the 1950s to the 1980s, from geometric-abstract paintings to participatory sculptures and performance works. A central aspect of the exhibition is the interactive approach of Clark’s work. Visitors can interact with a large number of replicas made especially for the exhibition.
Image above: Lygia Clark: Óculos, 1966 © Cultural Association “The World of Lygia Clark” / Foto/photo: Eduardo Clark, 1973
Lygia Clark is regarded as a radical innovator of the concept of art, as she fundamentally redefined the relationship between artist and viewer as well as between work and space. As one of the main representatives of the Neoconcretismo (Neo-Concretism) movement initiated in Rio de Janeiro in 1959, Clark understood the work of art as an organic phenomenon. She called for a subjective, body-related and sensual experience of art and made the active participation of the viewer an elementary component of her art. The retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie allows visitors to experience this participatory approach in Clark’s work by interacting with exhibition copies of sculptures and sensory objects. In addition, performances and workshops are regularly organised to activate the work of this important 20th century artist.
After the early constructivist paintings composed of various wooden panels, Clark turned away from painting altogether in the 1960s and developed her idea of the artwork as a body. She produced geometric sculptures that are movable constructions and can be folded into ever new positions by the viewer. Even after the dissolution of the neo-concrete group in 1961, Clark continued to develop her artistic principle of the organic work of art until her late work of the 1980s. At the beginning of the 1970s, she developed her concept of the Corpo Coletivo (collective body), which describes community-building, performative actions for participants in a group. Towards the end of her career, Clark developed her own body-based approach to therapy, in which her art objects were used.
The retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie brings together around 150 works on loan from international private collections and museums, including the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue in German and English published by E. A. Seemann Verlag. It is the first German-language publication on Lygia Clark and provides a comprehensive overview of her work.
Curated by Irina Hiebert Grun and Maike Steinkamp, research assistants at the Neue Nationalgalerie.
The exhibition is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
The exhibition is being created in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich, where it will be on display from autumn 2025 to spring 2026.
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Friday, 23 May – Sunday, 12 October 2025
WHERE?
Kulturforum, Neue Nationalgalerie
Potsdamer Straße 50
10785 Berlin
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