An Organic Phenomenon Beyond the Concrete: A Review of the Lygia Clark Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie

We retrospectively examine the “Lygia Clark: Retrospective” exhibition, which closed on 12 October 2025 at Neue Nationalgalerie. This first comprehensive presentation of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920–1988) in Germany showcased nearly 120 works spanning her fifty-year artistic practice with interdisciplinary depth in Mies van der Rohe’s glass-and-steel upper hall.

From Pictorial Surface to Spatial Rupture: A Neoconcrete Revolution

Beginning with Clark’s geometric-abstract paintings from the late 1940s, the exhibition focused on the artist’s post-1954 act of “rupturing the canvas,” documenting a pivotal art-historical break. The relief-like wooden panels from this period represent the art object’s first physical dialogue with space, transcending pictorial boundaries. As a pioneer of Neoconcretism, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1959, Clark began defining art at this point not as a rational object but as an “organic phenomenon.”

Interactive Process and “Bichos”: The Subjectivity of the Participant

At the curatorial heart of the exhibition was Clark’s participatory approach, which dismantled the hierarchy between viewer and artist. Her “Bichos” series provided the most concrete example of this phenomenological stance. These sculptures—made of hinged metal plates—were displayed as living forms that constantly change through viewer intervention, rejecting stasis. In this Berlin retrospective, allowing visitors to interact with specially produced replicas embodied the contemporary manifestation of Clark’s desire to view art as a “vital experience.”

Sensory Objects and the Construction of the Collective Body

By the late 1960s, Clark’s practice evolved beyond mere visual perception into a holistic sensory experience. The “Objetos Sensoriais,” given ample space in the exhibition—masks, goggles, and special suits—transformed the perceiver’s body into a perception laboratory. This phase opened the door to Clark’s “Corpo Coletivo” concept, where individual experience becomes a performative act that builds community. The body-focused therapy method developed in the final period of her career—using art objects as healing tools—was presented in the exhibition’s concluding section as a radical proposition on art’s curative power.

Institutional and Curatorial Anecdotes

Curated by Irina Hiebert Grun and Maike Steinkamp, the exhibition brought together loans from prestigious institutions such as Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro (MAM), and MoMA in New York, as the product of a global network. The first German-language publication on Lygia Clark accompanying the show became a theoretical document solidifying the artist’s place in European art history. Additionally, the audio guide prepared for children—structured around a “fly” character—was a successful pedagogical move that made Clark’s complex philosophy accessible to all age groups.

Lygia Clark’s retrospective left an indelible mark on Berlin’s artistic memory by proving that art is not merely an object to be looked at but a process to be lived.