Roberto Burle Marx

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Roberto Burle Marx (1981)

Roberto Burle Marx (born August 4, 1909 in São Paulo , † June 4, 1994 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian landscape architect , plant collector and painter . His brother was the musician Walter Burle Marx .

Life

Roberto Burle Marx was the fourth son of Wilhelm Marx from Trier , of German-Jewish descent, and the French singer and pianist Cecília Burle . He grew up in Rio de Janeiro in 1913, in an art-loving progressive family. He had piano and vocal training with a good clear baritone and originally planned to become a professional musician. He later enjoyed singing at parties. Burle Marx studied painting at the Escola de Belas Artes , then in 1928/1929 in Berlin, where he was strongly influenced by Cubism . He acquired a basic knowledge of the Brazilian flora in the greenhouses of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem during his studies there. As a garden architect, however, he was self-taught.

He worked with the architects Lúcio Costa , Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer . In 1932 he laid out the roof garden of Alfredo Schwartz's house in Rio de Janeiro, his first assignment. From 1934 to 1937 he worked in the park and garden administration of Recife and in 1935 laid out Casa Forte Square, which was mainly designed with Brazilian rainforest plants - a sensation at the time. Euclides da Cunha Square in the same city, on the other hand, is dominated by plants from the local caatinga , especially cacti.

In 1949 he and his brother Siegfried bought the 80 hectare Sítío Santo Antonio da Bica farm in Campo Grande south of Rio de Janeiro, where he ran a gardening business. Here he cultivated tropical plants that he had collected on his expeditions for use as garden plants, including bromeliads , cycads , thick-footed plants , arch hemp , heliconias and flamingo flowers . The house garden itself consists of a lawn surrounded by flower beds with a pond. Door and window lintels from demolished houses from Rio and weathered granite blocks from the surrounding area serve as design elements. He bequeathed the property to the state in 1985. It is now managed by the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional) and can be visited. In 1955 Burle Marx founded an architecture office in Rio de Janeiro.

Burle Marx was also active in the Brazilian conservation movement and was concerned about the extermination of native plants.

Burle Marx is considered the founder of modern garden architecture in general and the founder of a specifically Brazilian garden architecture. He used native plants in Brazil to design gardens and parks.

His gardens are characterized by organic, curved forms, which are planted with plants of the neotropics in strong, warm colors. Burle Marx preferred asymmetrical shapes. The overall impression is often that of an abstract painting. For Burle Marx, garden design was “painting with plants”. He demanded: “A garden must always be a work of art.” Since there were often no trained gardeners available to maintain the garden, the planting often had to be kept homogeneous. The architecture of the house is in constant interplay with the design of the garden. Burle Marx also tried to incorporate the garden into the landscape. His preferred plant species included the tree species Tibouchina urvilleana , daylilies , Beaucarnea recurvata , Setcreasea pallida and the giant bromeliad Alcantarea imperialis. Individual trees are used as accent plants. In Rio, 88 gardens designed by Burle Marx were to be placed under monument protection.

In the early 1990s, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin was redesigned. Roberto Burle Marx came back to Berlin before his death in 1994 and designed a colorful vision for the square, which, however, was not implemented. A dance show was dedicated to him during the closing ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games .

Honors

In 1979 he was elected as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

The plant genus Burlemarxia N.L. Menezes & Semir from the Velloziaceae family is named after him . A total of 33 species were named after him, including the plant species Begonia burle-marxii , Calathea burle-marxii and Philodendron burle-marxii .

Work (selection)

  • Roof garden of the house of Alfredo Schwartz, Rio de Janeiro (1932)
  • Roof garden of the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro (today Palácio Gustavo Capanema ), completed in 1937
  • Casa Forte Square and Euclides da Cunha Square in Recife (1937)
  • Praça Salgado Filho in Rio de Janeiro (1938)
  • Planting plan for the Brazilian pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York
  • Garden designs for public buildings in Brasília , including the Ministério das Relaciones Exteriores (1965), Ministerio da Justica, Ministerio de Exército and Tribunal de Contas da União
  • Pampulha Park in Belo Horizonte (1942)
  • Parque do Ibirapuera , São Paulo (1954)
  • Banco Safra , Rua Bela Cintra, São Paulo
  • Gardens of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (1955)
  • The 120 hectare Aterro do Flamengo in the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro (1961) in collaboration with Luiz Emygdio de Mello Filho , in which mainly native plants are used, a total of over 200 different species. The park has been registered as a national treasure since 1964.
  • Banco National Desenvolvimento Econômico Social, Rio de Janeiro
  • Petrobras Building, Rio de Janeiro
  • The 4 km long Calçadão de Copacabana along Avenida Atlântica, abstract ornaments in white limestone and black and red basalt, Rio de Janeiro (1970), the first beach promenade in Brazil
  • Garden of the German Embassy in Brasília , completed in 1971
  • KLCC Park in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
  • Private garden Vargem Grande Faenza in Areiras, São Paulo (1979)
  • Largo da Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (1985)
  • Cascade Garden in Longwood Gardens (1992)
  • Drafts for the redesign of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin (1994)
  • Logo of the Brazilian Tourism Authority Embratur
  • Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim , Brumadinho, Minas Gerais . It is a garden with thousands of tropical plants, which has been named Botanical Garden since 2010 .

Exhibitions

  • Landscape and gardens. Roberto BURLE MARX , exhibition in the Berlin pavilion at the Tiergarten of the Berlin Main Office for Green Areas and Horticulture 1976.
  • The Unnatural Art of Garden , retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York 1991.
  • Roberto BURLE MARX , exhibition of the Berlin regional group of the BDLA in Charlottenburg Palace in 1989.
  • Garden architect and artist Roberto BURLE MARX , Berliner Grün GmbH, exhibition 1993.
  • Brasilia. Modern architecture in Brazil at the IFA gallery in Berlin 2000
  • A permanência do Instável (The permanence of the impermanent), in Rio to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2009.
  • Tropical Modernism , exhibition in the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle , Berlin, from July 7th to October 3rd, 2017

gallery

  • Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, the black and white patterned pavements were designed by Burle Marx.

  • Copacabana, plaster

  • Copacabana

  • Congresso Nacional, Brasilia

  • Palace of Justice, Brasilia

  • KLCC Park in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

  • Flamengo Park in Rio de Janeiro

  • General plan of the Flamengo Park

  • Logo of the Brazilian Tourism Authority Embratur

literature

  • Jürgen Claus : The architecture of nature. An interview with the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle-Marx. In: Jürgen Claus: Meeting Point Art. Keil Verlag, Bonn 1982, ISBN 3-921591-21-X .
  • William H. Adams (Ed.): Roberto Burle Marx. The unnatural art of the garden. MOMA, New York 1991, ISBN 0-87070-197-5 . (Exhibition catalog)
  • Sima Eliovson: The gardens of Roberto Burle Marx. Thames & Hudson, London 1991, ISBN 0-500-01507-4 .
  • Frieder Goeser: Roberto revisited. Exhibition about the work of Roberto Burle Marx in Berlin. In: Garden + Landscape. 120, 2010/1, p. 42.
  • Marta Montero: Burle Marx. The lyrical landscape. Thames & Hudson, London 2001, ISBN 0-500-51046-6 .
  • Vera B. Siqueira: Burle Marx. Cosac & Naify, São Paulo 2004, ISBN 85-7503-089-2 .
  • Lauro Cavalcanti (Ed.), Farés El-Dahdah (Ed.), Francis Rambert (Ed.): Roberto Burle Marx. The modernity of landscape. Actar, Barcelona 2011, ISBN 978-84-92861-67-5 .
  • Gareth Doherty (Ed.): Roberto Burle Marx Lectures. Landscape as Art and Urbanism. Lars Müller, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-03778-379-5 .

Web links

Commons : Roberto Burle Marx  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Larry Rohter: A New Look at the Multi Talented Man Who Made Tropical Landscaping of Art. In: The New York Times. January 20, 2009. Retrieved December 29, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Noel Kingsbury: Garden Designers at home. The private spaces of the world's leading designers. Pavilion, London 2011, p. 47.
  3. ↑ James van Sweden, Thomas Christopher: The Artful Garden. Creative inspiration for Landscape design. Random House, New York 2011, p. 110.
  4. ↑ a b c Carlos Smaniotto Costa: A protagonist of the Brazilian avant-garde, Brazil celebrates the 100th birthday of the garden architect Roberto Burle Marx. (PDF; 15.4 MB). In: Stadt + Grün / Das Gartenamt . 58, 2009/8, p. 52. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  5. ↑ The Desire for Form, O Desejo da Forma: Neoconcretismo and Contemporary Brazilian Art. Academy of Arts, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-88331-162-3 . (Exhibition catalog, September 3 to November 7, 2010, Akademie der Künste). In it p. 282 a short biography.
  6. ^ A b Guy Cooper, Gordon Taylor: Paradise transformed. The private garden for the 21st century. Monacelli Press, New York 1996, p. 12.
  7. ↑ a b c Carlos Smaniotto Costa: A protagonist of the Brazilian avant-garde, Brazil celebrates the 100th birthday of the garden architect Roberto Burle Marx. (PDF; 15.4 MB). In: Stadt + Grün / Das Gartenamt. 58, 2009/8, p. 53.
  8. ^ Noel Kingsbury: Garden Designers at home. The private spaces of the world's leading designers. Pavilion, London 2011, p. 46.
  9. ^ Noel Kingsbury: Garden Designers at home. The private spaces of the world's leading designers. Pavilion, London 2011, p. 50.
  10. ^ A b Norbert Schindler, Walter Rossow, Roberto Burle Marx: Memories of two old masters of garden and landscape architecture. In: Stadt + Grün . 2001/1, p. 33.
  11. ^ Noel Kingsbury: Garden Designers at home. The private spaces of the world's leading designers. Pavillon, London 2011, pp. 52-53.
  12. ↑ Marcus Woeller: The Secret About the True Art of Gardening . In: world. accessed on November 14, 2017.
  13. ^ Honorary Members: Roberto Burle Marx. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  15. ↑ Norbert Schindler, Walter Rossow, Roberto Burle Marx: Memories of two old masters of garden and landscape architecture. In: Stadt + Grün. 2001/1, pp. 31-34.
personal data
SURNAME Burle Marx, Roberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian landscape architect
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH São Paulo
DATE OF DEATH 4th June 1994
Place of death Rio de Janeiro