Lygia Clark: the artist who transformed the viewer into part of the artwork

There are artists who create works to be contemplated. Lygia Clark created experiences to be lived. One of the leading names of 20th-century Brazilian art, the Minas Gerais native helped break the traditional distance between artwork and audience by proposing works that could be touched, manipulated and experienced with one's own body.

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Throughout a career marked by constant experimentation, Lygia Clark traversed painting, sculpture, installations and sensory practices, even questioning the very definition of art. Her work became fundamental to understanding the development of Neoconcretism and some of the paths that led to the consolidation of Brazilian contemporary art.

Who was Lygia Clark?

Born Lygia Pimentel Lins, in Belo Horizonte, in 1920, the artist began her training relatively late. After moving to Rio de Janeiro, she studied with Roberto Burle Marx and Zélia Salgado, in the late 1940s. Shortly after, she lived in Paris, where she came into contact with artists such as Fernand Léger, Arpad Szenes and Isaac Dobrinsky.

Back in Brazil, she joined the Grupo Frente, led by Ivan Serpa, and deepened her research on geometry and space. The artist began to question even the frame of paintings, seeking ways to make the artwork exceed its traditional limits and establish a more direct relationship with the surrounding space.

Lygia Clark and Neoconcretism

In 1959, Lygia Clark participated in the creation of the neoconcrete movement, alongside names such as Lygia Pape, Amilcar de Castro and Franz Weissmann. The group contested an overly rational approach to concrete art and advocated for a production capable of incorporating subjectivity, sensitivity and experience.

This transformation would be decisive for Lygia's work. The artwork would progressively cease to be an autonomous object to depend on the presence of the audience. More than observing a finished composition, the visitor would come to interfere with it — and, later, to experience sensations provoked by the artwork itself.

Bichos: when the audience becomes part of the artwork

Created in 1960, Bichos is one of Lygia Clark's most emblematic series. The pieces are made of geometric metal plates connected by hinges, allowing different configurations as they are moved.

The principle is fundamental to understanding the artist: there is not just one definitive form. The artwork changes based on the relationship established with those who manipulate it. The spectator thus leaves their passive position to participate directly in the creation of that experience.

From the object to the body

If the Bichos invited the hands to transform the work, the following works would take this investigation even further. In proposals such as Caminhando (1964), O Eu e o Tu (1967) and A Casa é o Corpo (1968), bodily and sensory experience took center stage.

In Caminhando, for instance, the participant continuously cuts a Möbius strip made of paper. The resulting object is less important than the very gesture of cutting. The artwork essentially comes to exist during the action — a radical idea for the period and fundamental to understanding Lygia's later production.

When art and therapy come together

In the 1970s, this research took on new dimensions. During her time in Paris, Lygia Clark taught at the Sorbonne and developed collective experiences linked to the body and perception. Back in Rio de Janeiro, in 1976, she began working individually with the so-called Relational Objects.

Cushions, plastic bags, stones, fabrics, shells and other simple materials were used to provoke tactile, bodily and emotional sensations. At this point, the boundaries between artistic and therapeutic practice became increasingly blurred — and Lygia herself began to move away from the conventional idea of the artist.

A Brazilian artist

Lygia Clark died in Rio de Janeiro in 1988, leaving behind a body of work that helped profoundly expand the meaning of a work of art. Her trajectory starts from the surface of painting, passes through three-dimensional objects and reaches the human body as a territory of experimentation.

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More than producing objects for museums, Lygia proposed another way of experiencing art. By transforming the audience into participants and bringing together creation, perception, space and body, she opened paths that remain present in installations, performances and immersive experiences of contemporary art.

This text was developed with the assistance of CASACOR Publisher, an exclusive content agent developed by the CASACOR Technology team based on the knowledge base of casacor.com.br. The generated content was subsequently edited by Yeska Coelho.