Bo Bardi was an equal appreciator of the high and the low in a way that feels distinctly modern today, and difficult to conceive of in the 1950s. She created spaces unlike many modernists of her age: full of light, referencing the wattle and daub shelters and wooden floors and thatched roofs of rubber tappers as easily as the creations of Gio Ponti and Le Corbusier.
At MASP, Bo Bardi famously created crystal easels to display works that encouraged a new way of seeing, interacting with, and showing art. The effect, which is like standing in a forest of floating masterpieces, was revolutionary.
She built Casa de Vidro for herself and her husband, the writer and curator Pietro Bardi, in 1951, on a former tea farm situated in what had once been a rainforest surrounding São Paulo. Until her death in 1992, Bo Bardi made Casa de Vidro both her home and a meeting point for artists, architects, and intellectuals. The day of The Square’s debut, the lush aerie was as alive as ever: filled with art and some of the artists who had made it.
For The Square, “the idea is: what if Lina Bo Bardi had survived into modernity, what work would she have brought in here?” said Stockler. “What would that say about Brazil today?” Stockler went about combining the Instituto’s collection with contemporary pieces by Brazilian artists like Allan Weber, Mestre Guarany, Cristiano Lenhardt, Davi de Jesus do Nascimento, Gokula Stoffel, and Vivian Caccuri.