This exhibition is the first to be held in Spain on the suggestive figure of Lina Bo Bardi (Rome, 1914 - São Paulo 1992) who, trained as an architect in the Italy of the thirties, arrived in Brazil in 1946 with her husband, the art critic and collector Pietro María Bardi, part of the great post-war European migratory wave.
Lina Bo Bardi soon became enthusiastic about her new host country. And with a multifaceted dynamism - as an architect, museologist, designer, writer, cultural activist and exhibition maker - she joined the renewal of the arts in Brazil, working on the same axis of the complex relations between modernity and tradition, the creation of avant-garde and popular customs, the individuality of the modern artist and the collective work of the people.

The subtitle of the exhibition is part of the slogan ("Tupí or not Tupí? That is the question") of the cannibalistic Manifesto of Oswald de Andrade (1928), an example of cannibal appropriation of the famous quote from the Shakespearean Hamlet. And it is that the so-called Brazilian "anthropophagy" of the twenties, which can be considered the most original aesthetic-ideological revolution of the Latin American avant-garde, pretended, in effect, the swallowing, absorption, assimilation and rethinking of European culture. With this, the artists of Brazil sought to make a cultural digestion that resulted in a national identity and a language that was both modern and genuinely Brazilian.

Lina Bo Bardi, aware that anthropophagy was at the base of the tropicalist movement of the 1960s - which she herself shared in some way - incarnated a kind of anthropophagy in reverse. For her, also the Old World, from which she came, had to be transformed by the look of the New World, in which she lived, to give way to a new society: to a sort of "aristocracy of the people" (in her words), of a new people, a mixture of the European, the Indian, the black and the native of the northeast of the country; a world full of dreams for a better future.

The exhibition is presented in continuity with the exhibition that Fundación Juan March dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral (2009), in which he presented Brazil from the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century. Lina Bo Bardi shared the social concerns of Tarsila do Amaral and struggled to answer them, moving into action through the architecture, objects and collective actions that articulate her work. The goal of Lina Bo Bardi: tupí or not tupí. Brazil, 1946-1992 is to present Lina from the three most conspicuous places in her geography (São Paulo, Salvador de Bahía and Northeast Brazil) and "tell", through her work and that of some of her contemporaries, the artistic and cultural panorama of Brazil of the second half of the 20th century.
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5 october, 2018 – 13 january, 2019
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Venue
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Calle de Castelló, 77, 28006 Madrid, Spain
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Achillina Bo was born on December 5, 1914 in Rome, Italy. Lina was the oldest child of Enrico and Giovana Bo, who later had another daughter named Graziella. In 1939, she graduated from the Rome College of Architecture at the age of 25 with her final piece, "The Maternity and Infancy Care Centre". She then moved to Milan to begin working with architect Carlo Pagani in the Studio Bo e Pagani, No 12, Via Gesù. Bo Bardi collaborated (until 1943) with architect and designer Giò Ponti on the magazine Lo Stile – nella casa e nell’arredamento. In 1942, at the age of 28, she opened her own architectural studio on Via Gesù, but the lack of work during wartime soon led Bardi to take up illustration for newspapers and magazines such as Stile, Grazia, Belleza, Tempo, Vetrina and Illustrazione Italiana. Her office was destroyed by an aerial bombing in 1943. From 1944-5 Bardi was the Deputy Director of Domus magazine.

The event prompted her deeper involvement in the Italian Communist Party. In 1945, Domus commissioned Bo Bardi to travel around Italy with Carlo Pagani and photographer Federico Patellani to document and evaluate the situation of the destroyed country. Bo Bardi, Pagani and Bruno Zevi established the weekly magazine A – Attualità, Architettura, Abitazione, Arte in Milan (A Cultura della Vita).[4] She also collaborated on the daily newspaper Milano Sera, directed by Elio Vittorini. Bo Bardi took part in the First National Meeting for Reconstruction in Milan, alerting people to the indifference of public opinion on the subject, which for her covered both the physical and moral reconstruction of the country.

In 1946, Bo Bardi moved to Rome and married the art critic and journalist Pietro Maria Bardi.

In Brazil, Bo Bardi expanded his ideas influenced by a recent and overflowing culture different from the European situation. Along with her husband, they decided to live in Rio de Janeiro, delighted with the nature of the city and its modernist buildings, like the current Gustavo Capanema Palace, known as the Ministry of Education and Culture, designed by Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, Roberto Burle Marx and a group of young Brazilian architects. Pietro Bardi was commissioned by a museum from Sao Paulo city where they established their permanent residence.

There they began a collection of Brazilian popular art (its main influence) and his work took on the dimension of the dialogue between the modern and the Popular. Bo Bardi spoke of a space to be built by living people, an unfinished space that would be completed by the popular and everyday use.
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