This Is How We Do It — Roberto Burle Marx: Pioneering Modernist, Environmentalist
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist is the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States dedicated to Roberto Burle Marx, one of the most influential landscape architects of the twentieth century. Although his work was transformative and redefined landscape design — abandoning rigid symmetry for abstraction, and rejecting imported flora and European models for native plants and grand, colorful sweeps of vegetation — Robert Burle Marx has been a name unfamiliar in the United States, until now.
Featuring more than 100 works including garden plans, paintings, sculpture, jewelry, and a magnificent tapestry, the exhibition encompasses the creative diversity and breadth of Burle Marx’s 60-year career. Along with his prolific body of work, Burle Marx was a pioneering environmentalist and a self-taught botanist, identifying over 50 yet-undiscovered plant species. He also preserved the native flora of Brazil by increasing awareness of ecological issues and used these plants in his garden designs.
In this podcast, Claudia Nahson, Morris & Eva Feld Curator, speaks about the process of organizing the exhibition and Roberto Burle Marx’s wide-ranging creativity as a Renaissance man — he was at once a landscape architect, painter, sculptor, designer, and ecologist. For him, all these endeavors were equally important, facets of one another.
“He really was a major pioneer, introducing modernism into the field of landscape architecture,” says Nahson. “But he was not only that. He also was a multifaceted artist, and tried his hand in every single medium.”
As an advocate for the environment, Burle Marx was one of the first to speak out against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Nahson says, “The concept of an environmentalist didn’t really exist when he was active in Brazil. He experienced first-hand the tremendous devastation of Brazil’s natural resources in his expeditions to the Brazilian jungle: the practice of burning forests and deforestation…he was very vocal and very much on the scene before people were paying attention to these issues.”
On Tuesday, September 13 at 2 pm, join Claudia Nahson for a behind-the-scenes gallery talk on how the exhibition came together. The program is free with Pay-What-You-Wish admission. RSVP online.
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist is on view at the Jewish Museum through September 18.
