Lygia Pape

Lygia Pape (7 April 1927 – 3 May 2004) was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, engraver, and filmmaker, who was a key figure in the Concrete movement and a later co-founder of the Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s.

Along with Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, she was an important artist in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil and pushed geometric art to include aspects of interaction and to engage with ethical and political themes.

Lygia Pape was born on 7 April 1927 in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.

Pape studied philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFTJ).

Afterwards, she received an informal training in fine arts, and studied with Fayga Ostrower at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.

By the age of 20, Pape had joined the concrete art movement.

The term "concrete art" was coined by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg in 1930.

In the 1950s, Pape created her Tecelares Series.

The Tecelares wood prints were originally seen purely as works of Concrete art because of their precise and geometric aesthetic.

The woodblock prints are minimalistic; they feature planes of black ink and thin lines that reveal the white rice paper underneath.

The production of the series seems straightforward: Pape incised the entire surface of the woodblock with thin lines, adding several non-orthogonal lines to create the appearance of distinct planes and the suggestion of movement and space in a work that would be otherwise flat and static.

In Tecelares, Lygia Pape used "weaving" as a metaphor to evoke handiwork and a connection to Brazil's traditional and indigenous culture.

Pape spoke of how indigenous Brazilian cultures had used geometry to express fundamental concepts, like the concept of collective identity.

Thus, for Lygia Pape, geometry didn't represent industry or mechanization, but rather it expressed a transcendent idiom.

Instead of using a gridded and rigid composition, Pape blended natural and organic patterns with incised lines that are intertwined to "warp and weft."

Pape used simple materials, crafted minimally by her own hands to incorporate expression into a work that is not expressionistic.

In 1952, at the age of 25, Pape met fellow Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, and Aluísio Carvão.

Together the quartet formed the Grupo Frente.

The Grupo Frente organized a subtle movement that rejected the national painting style of Brazil.

Grupo Frente began exploring abstract and concrete art styles that distanced themselves from overly political art.

The group was united by their desire to reject modern Brazilian art.

Grupo Frente was revolutionary for their studies in line, form, and color.

Grupo Frente organized two solo exhibitions.

Their first exhibition was at the Ibeu gallery in Rio in 1954, under the artist guidance of Ferreira Gullar.

Their second exhibition was in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio.

Both exhibits highlighted non-traditional use of line, geometric shapes and color.

After her involvement with the Grupo Frente Concrete artists, Pape transitioned into the short wave of Neo-Concrete art.

This 1959 artwork in the Tecelares series, takes the same woodblock carving technique and is incised by thin parallel lines which are disrupted by the non-orthogonal lines that cut across the print.

The two horizontally oriented lines that cut across the print break up the continuity of the parallel lines, creating the illusion of a separate plain and thus, space.

Although Pape used a ruled edge and a compass to create the lines in Sem Título [Untitled] (1959), there are slight variations in the width of the lines, revealing that a hand rather than a machine made the forms.

Additionally, the rice paper's delicacy had absorbed the ink, creating imprecise edges.

The black ink of the woodprint's background also reveals the natural wood grain of the block print as one can see the porous marks of the wood between the incised lines on the print.

So despite the woodprint's originally Concrete identity, Sem Título [Untitled] (1959), is now understood as a transitional piece from the Concrete movement into the Neo-Concrete, as it is infused with non-mechanical and "handmade" qualities that seem more expressive than mechanistic.

Also similar to the 1959 print, the 1960 print has the same imprecise quality created by the feathering of the ink on the rice paper.

It also has a very organic quality, which is produced through the patterns and swirls of the wood grain.

Because of this organic pattern, this print seems to overtly oppose the mechanic properties associated with Concrete art.

As scholar Adele Nelson suggested, the Grupo Ruptura artist Waldemar Cordeiro and the Grupo Frente Ferreira Gullar had a debate on each other’s “inadequate and overzealous rigor in their respective approaches to geometric abstraction”, which promoted and inspired the former members of Grupo Frente including Lygia Pape to initiate the Neo-Concrete movement in 1959.

The 1960s version of Tecelares is even more organic and expressive than the earlier 1959 version.

The print shows the grain of the woodblock even more overtly in the bottom portion of the print, while the top portion remains relatively muted.

As in the other prints in this series, Sem Título [Untitled] (1960) is cut by diagonal lines that disrupt the continuity of the horizontal wood grain pattern, creating movement and distinct planes in the artwork, though they are considerably more subtle than the 1959 Sem Título [Untitled] print of the same series.