: BRAZILIAN MODERN at NYBG: Review By Polly Guerin

Roberto Burle Marx  at The New York Botanical

"FLY ME DOWN TO RIO,"may not be on your travel agenda but The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) will get you there with the recent launch of the largest botanical tropical exhibition, BRAZILIAN MODERN, THE LIVING ART OF ROBERTO BURLE MARX, the influential Brazilian modernist artist, landscape architect, and plant explorer and conservationist 
       It is also the first to combine a horticultural tribute to Burle Marx's design work, featuring lush gardens with a  curated gallery of the artist's vibrant paintings, drawings and textiles, which reveal deep connections between his artistic practice and his commitment to environmental
conservation. 
       The exhibit at The New York Botanical Garden is on view until September 20, 2019 with many musical and cultural programs. On July 7th Choro Das 3 performs and transposes you to Brazil with a group formed by three sisters and their father reviving the traditional Choro, an instrumental Brazilian music from the 19th century that has some resonance with New Orleans Jazz as well as Bluegrass music in the United States, Other engaging programming showcases the sights and sounds of Brazil and its lively contributions to music and dance evoke Rio de Janeiro, the 'Cidade Maravilhosa' ('Wonderful City') that Roberto Burle Marx called home and inspired his life and work. www.nybg.org.
      Years ago, I was looking out my hotel window in Rio de Janeiro and was captivated by the panorama of the continuous mosaic promenade that bordered Copacabana Beach's main thoroughfare, "the most famous in Brazil," where native sea breeze-resistant trees and palms appear along Avenida Atlantica. The mosaic pavement, a gigantic composition more than two miles long with a pattern composed of bold abstract motifs in white, black, and red-brown stone evokes modernist imagery in Roberto Burle Marx's best- known project.    

        "Who was the genius of such an innovative pavement plan?"  It was  Brazil's native son, a multi-faceted personality. The son of a German-Jewish father and a Brazilian mother of French, Portuguese, and Dutch descent, Burle Marx embraced modernism in the 1930s, as the movement was taking hold in his country among artists and intellectuals. Using abstraction as his guiding principle, and grand sweeps of voluminous local foliage and colorful flora, Burle Marx devised a new form of landscape expression, revolutionizing garden design.                                    

Sidewalk Installation at The York Botanical Garden

       From Copacabana Beach to Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Beach, throughout Brazil and around the world, the artistic and prolific work of ROBERTO BURLE MARX (1909-1994) has made him one of the most prominent landscape artists of the twentieth century.  He is famous for designing over two thousand outdoor spaces, such as public parks, private and home gardens.  Sidewalks and gardens were never the same again. His abstract and undulating curvilinear sidewalks were colorful and opened up a new world of artful expression for public appreciation. Yet, Burle Marx's oeuvre reached out into many other areas of artistic expression. Famous projects include the multitude of gardens that embellish Brasilia, the capital city of Brazil founded in 1960 and featuring buildings by famed architect Oscar Niemeyer.

        If you are a museum aficionado, like me, you may remember  the Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist exhibition at The Jewish Museum, 2016, which presented the first New York City exhibition to focus on Burle Marx in more than two decades, and the first exhibition in the United States to to showcase the full range of this artistic output.  A major exhibition highlight is a magnificent, nearly 90-foot-long wool tapestry created by the artist in 1969 for the Santo Andre Civic Center, near Sao Paulo. As is characteristic of his work from that period, bold colors, geometric, and biomorphic abstraction fuse in a gigantic composition, creating a veritable woven garden. This monumental work has only once before been exhibited outside Brazil. 

Lush Garden at The New York Botanical Garden

       The New York Botanical Garden takes Burle Marx to new experiences in an exhibition that explores the richness and breadth of the artist's diversified and extensive oeuvre-his landscape architecture, painting, sculpture, theater design, textiles, and jewelry--as well his reputation as an ecologist, naturalist and musician whose artistic style was avant-garde and modern.

        In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gardens in Brazil primarily followed French models, featuring a symmetrical layout and imported flora. Burle Marx did away with symmetry and advocated for the use of native plants, making numerous incursions into the Brazilian country side and jungle throughout his life in search of exotic plants. He was a horticulturist and a pioneering ecologist who only used plants suitable to the environment and was one of the first to speak out against the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. 

        Roberto Burle Marx's gardens are works of modern art, not only because they make use of flat planes, abstract shapes, and bold colors, but because of the way they behave: they prompt awareness of oneself in relation to the built environment.  In this exhibition, Burle Marx's global influence and legacy is also examined and It is no surprise that today's artists find Burle Marx a fruitful source of inspiration and you will, too.
      Ta ta Darlings!!! The work of Roberto Burle Marx tugs at our collective imagination...that cities can be a magical places, where sidewalks move in abstract directions and color and pattern inspire a new way of thinking about art.  Fan mail welcome at pollytalknyc@gmail.com. Visit Polly's other Blogs on visionary men, women determined to succeed, fashion, and even poetry at www.pollytalk.com and click on

the links in the left-hand column,