Gomide&Co, on the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2022, which takes place between November 29 and December 3, is pleased to announce the collaborative project that presents, in an unprecedented way, a set of furniture pieces developed by Lina Bo Bardi during the period of activity of Studio d'Arte Palma, a historical Crystal easel signed by Lina, and a selection of significant works that have as a common thread her approach to Brazilian popular art.
The Studio d'Arte Palma (1948-1950), which has most of the pieces signed by Bo Bardi – others co-signed with Giancarlo Palanti – inventively synthesized its modernist roots and the Brazilian formal vocabulary, techniques, and materials. The design, colors, and different purposes witnessed a pioneering and notoriously authorial application that conceived furniture as the fruit of a complex but no less accessible thinking. The set of furniture presented was exclusively designed for Casa Bittencourt [Bittencourt House] and will be exhibited collaboratively at Gomide&Co and Galeria Luisa Strina booths.
The selection of works brings together artists whose artistic practices and languages walked alongside the variety of exhibition projects, curatorial practices, and activations signed by Bo Bardi between the 1940s and 1980s. It was with the foundation of MASP – The São Paulo Museum of Art, in 1947, that her ideas took on distinct configurations, and the architect was able to give life to iconic projects such as the group shows Bahia no Ibirapuera (1959), Nordeste (1963), and The Hand of the Brazilian People (1969), among others.
In addition to the artists from the gallery's program, such as José Resende, León Ferrari, and Lenora de Barros, wood sculptures by Nino – João Cosmo Felix –, paintings by Jaider Esbell, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, José Antonio da Silva, and Cássio M'Boy will be on display alongside works by Mira Schendel, Lygia Clark, and Leonilson, establishing a subjective yet affectionate overview on Brazilian art.
Close to the artist Cássio M'Boy, who held his first solo show at MASP in 1950, and José Antonio da Silva – who in his first exhibition at Domus Gallery, in 1948, had 14 paintings acquired by the Bo Bardi couple –, Lina's thought was informed by the self-taught practice of those artists and established unique approximations between distinct images and intentionalities, aiming at the valorization of popular art at a time when attentions were drawn to the specialization of the artistic language and the institutionalization of the artist's position within the art system.
The juxtaposition of different concepts and Lina's experimental verve can be synthesized with the creation of the Crystal easel (1968/1996). The support, used as the primary exhibition model of the MASP gallery until 1996, is an exceptional example of the thought process developed by Lina in the previous decades: the work of art that inserts itself in space, inhabiting and transforming it. The contrast of the easel's materials reflects her idea of a totalizing space, simultaneously work and path; an exercise we have tried to reproduce, based on detailed research about the architect, in our project.
In addition to the participation in the main sector, Gomide&Co will present a Kabinett dedicated to the artist Maria Lira Marques (1945), a central figure in the art developed in the Jequitinhonha Valley, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. A selection of the artist's works will be presented, including her recent production and rarely seen pieces produced in the 1990s, especially paintings with natural pigments on various media – paper, hardboard, canvas, and stone.