Lina Bo Bardi –The Poetry of Concrete

Lina Bo Bardi was born in Rome in 1914 and immigrated to Brazil in 1946. The high point of her recognition came in 2021, when the architect was posthumously awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for her life’s work.

In the exhibition Lina Bo Bardi – The Poetry of Concrete, the Museum of Architectural Drawing presents a selection of 40 drawings that are being shown together for the first time in Europe. The exhibits come from the collection of the Instituto Bardi, founded by Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi. These works served as sketches and designs for six realised projects by cultural institutions: Casa de Vidro, Solar do Unhão, MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Teatro Oficina, SESC Pompéia and Casa do Benin. They enter into a dialogue with photographs by the artist Veronika Kellndorfer, who researches Lina Bo Bardi's buildings to explore how the architectural memory of a society can be read.

In a poetic, playful and informal fashion, Bo Bardi presented her ideas in drawings that illustrated her view of a building as a total work of art. She often used innovative construction materials such as glass and concrete, which, notwithstanding their structural contrasts, form an impressive harmony in her work and came to establish themselves as integral components of Brazilian modernism.

Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Perspective of the Belvedere, 1965 Ink, pastel on parchment paper 49.9 x 69.5 cm