This volume, which forms part of the Arte Brasileira Contemporânea (ABC) collection, discusses Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. It includes texts by the artist herself—indeed, the book is a sort of anthology of her writings—and by critics Mário Pedrosa and Ferreira Gullar. Those texts, in conjunction with images of her production from the fifties, sixties, and seventies, provide an overview of Clark’s always experimental art. In 1958, Gullar wrote the text “Lygia Clark: uma experiência radical, 1954–1958,” in which he asserts that Clark’s paintings are objects open to, rather than outside of, space. Her work, Gullar argues, eschews the division between space and work insofar as the artist “builds the painting as object and as expression, operating directly on the real space.” Pedrosa’s text, entitled “Significação de Lygia Clark” (1963), addresses Clark’s Casulos [Cocoons], Contra-relevos [Counter-Reliefs], and Bichos [Creatures] series which, in his view, emerge at the core of an uncertain “post-sculptural” space. Pedrosa is convinced that Clark’s “creatures” have revolutionized an outdated concept of sculpture. These works “add a new element as they stand out, more than her earlier work, in the domain of Kinetic constructions and creations. Lygia is now inciting the viewer to participate [….]” The volume contains the following texts by Clark, some of them extensive reflections and others descriptions of works and proposals: “Pensamento Mudo,” “A morte do plano” (1960), “Os Bichos” (1960), “Do ato” [Of the Act] (1965), “Caminhando” (1964), “A propósito do instante” (1965), “A propósito da magia do objeto” (1965), “Um mito moderno: a colocação em evidência do instante como nostalgia do Cosmos” (1965), “Arte, religiosidade, espaço-tempo” (1965), “Nós recusamos...” [We refuse…] (1965), “Nós somos os propositores” [We are the ones who propose] (1968), “Somos domésticos?” (1968) [see doc. no. 1110516], “Quatro proposições recentes,” “A casa é o corpo” [The House is the Body] (1968), “O corpo é a casa” (1969), “Baba antropofágica” (1973), “Cabeça” (1975), “Flor: ‘relaxação’” [Flower: Relaxation] (1974), “Túnel” (1973), “Ovo – mortalha” [Egg – Shroud] (1968), “Objeto relacional,” “Objeto relacional em contexto terapêutico,” “Estruturação do self” [Structuring the Self], “Métodos para tirar o sujeito de estado regressivo” [Methods to Remove the Individual from His Regressive State], and “Amostras de estudos de caso” [Samples of Case Studies].

The ABC—Arte Contemporânea Brasileira—collection launched by the Fundação Nacional das Artes (FUNARTE) in 1978 would become a bibliographical point of reference due to its pioneering approach to Brazilian art from the sixties and seventies. The series, which was published over the course of sixteen years, included books on major artists such as Anna Bella Geiger, Carlos Vergara, Rubens Gerchman, Artur Barrio, Antonio Dias, Wesley Duke Lee, Lygia Clark, Cildo Meireles, Waltércio Caldas, Lygia Pape, and Antonio Manuel. The authors who contributed to the outstanding project were, among others, critics Ronaldo Brito, Paulo Sergio Duarte, Fernando Cocchiarale, Mário Pedrosa, Paulo Venâncio Filho, Frederico Morais, and Ferreira Gullar, and artist Helio Oiticica.

Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920–88) was active from the late forties through the eighties. In the fifties, after briefly producing figurative work on canvas, she joined a group of Rio de Janeiro-based artists initially known as Grupo Frente. Under the leadership of Ivan Serpa, that group looked to São Paulo as it became part of the Brazilian Concrete movement. Art critic Ferreira Gullar’s text “I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta: 2 ? O grupo do Rio” [doc. no. 1090217] describes and comments on work by Clark and others in the exhibition held in 1956. In the late fifties, Clark became part of the Neo-Concrete movement, which radically questioned the Concrete movement. That later movement began in 1959 with the launching of the “Manifesto Neoconcreto” written by Ferreira Gullar with artists Franz Weissmann, Amílcar de Castro, Lygia Pape, Reynaldo Jardim (who worked in theater), and  Theon Spanudis (a poet), all of whom participated in the aforementioned I Exposição de Arte Neoconcreta (1959) in Rio.

Ferreira Gullar also considers the course of Clark’s work in the text, written in 1960, entitled “Do quadro ao não objeto” [doc. no. 1091272]. For a critical analysis of Clark’s international career through the eighties, see “Lygia Clark: In Search of the Body” [doc. no. 1232526], written in 1994 by English curator and critic Guy Brett, who took an active interest in her production from the beginning.