Place of Being: The Burle Marx Legacy

Place of Being: The Burle Marx Legacy takes as its starting point twenty-two landscape projects for public spaces developed over the course of seven decades by Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) and his collaborators. A innovative landscape designer and a pivotal figure in shaping Brazil’s urban landscape, Burle Marx is closely associated with the modern imaginary of cities like Brasília and Rio de Janeiro.

As a landscape architect with a deep interest in botany, he expanded knowledge of Brazil’s native flora and identified dozens of endemic species, while also warning of the urgent need for environmental conservation. His use of these species in landscape projects gave rise to a distinctively modern language that subverted the geometry and order of European gardens.

Bringing together compositional studies, sketches, drawings, photographs, and press material, the exhibition unfolds across five thematic sections, and enters into dialogue with the work of six artists currently living and working in Portugal: Juan Araujo explores modern architecture, especially in Brazil and Latin America, through a critical lens; Filipe Feijão reflects on notions of construction and ruin; Mónica de Miranda draws attention to the “invisible” gardens found on Lisbon’s outskirts; Fernanda Fragateiro emphasises the right to aesthetic experience in public gardens; Lourdes Castro enters into dialogue with the native botanical heritage of Madeira; and João dos Santos Martins explores the relationship between choreography and the garden. In conversation with the exhibition’s five core themes, each of these artists opens up new perspectives on Burle Marx’s work.

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