In this article the architect Lina Bo Bardi discusses shop window displays. In her opinion, shop windows mirror a town or city’s urban character and should be treated as exhibition spaces that are open to the public. They contribute to the refinement of the population’s taste and therefore become a moral responsibility for the storekeeper. Decorations based on baroque stucco treatments, coats of arms, and paper flowers have nothing to do with the industrial products on display; decorations of that type are only concerned with the storekeeper’s profit and are a clear reflection of the shallow taste of an elite that is still attached to aesthetic values that are hopelessly out of date. Bardi announces that HABITAT, the magazine she directs, is publishing the work of an artist-window dresser who is fully aware of the responsibility involved in the display of commercial products.  

In the early 1950s the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi [née Achillina Bo, 1914?92], who lived in Brazil, was the editor of HABITAT, the magazine published by the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo). In 1951 Lina and her husband, the curator and director of MASP, Pietro Maria Bardi (1900?99), started the industrial design course at the museum’s IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporânea) where she worked as a teacher. At that school, that operated from 1951 to 1953, the industrial designer—according to Bauhaus first principles—was considered one of the most important professionals of the industrial age and was responsible for modern society’s visual identity. Bardi’s store window project thus fell well within that purview. Her article demonstrates her support for an aesthetic functionalist approach, which was also a legacy of the Bauhaus teachings.      

The artist referred to in the article is Leopold Haar (1910?54), the Polish-born artist living in exile in Brazil, who was one of the seven signatories to the “Manifesto ruptura” (1952). He was a teacher at the IAC and his work is featured in the above-mentioned issue of HABITAT magazine.

For more on this matter, see by Leopold Haar, “Plásticas Novas”, HABITAT # 5, 1952 [doc. no. 1086915]; by J. Ruchti, “Instituto de Arte Contemporânea”, HABITAT # 3, 1951; and by Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi, “O Instituto de Arte Contemporânea surge.. (…)”, IAC brochure, c. 1950.