Hauser + Wirth Announces Lygia Pape Representation

April 1, 2016 by Marion Maneker

The continuing search for artists with underdeveloped global markets has led Hauser + Wirth to represent the estate of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape1:

When Hauser & Wirth featured international abstract artists at its Zurich gallery in 2014, Lygia Pape was one of them.

Now the gallery has decided to represent Ms. Pape, a Brazilian artist central to the Neo-Concrete movement, who died in 2004 at age 77. The gallery’s first show devoted to her will open in London on Sept. 23.

“In Brazil, she is an absolute giant, but she’s not really represented in the U.S.,” said Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth’s partner and vice president, adding that the gallery “realized how important the work is.”

The gallery’s press release adds:

Pape’s experimental practice spanned drawing, sculpture, engraving, installation, choreography, and filmmaking as she moved between mediums to explore geometric form, positive and negative space, the intellectual and physical participation of the spectator, and above all art’s potential to ignite social change. Many of Pape’s works were created in response to rampant political repression in Brazil in the late 1960s, and reflected the artist’s strongly critical views of the government’s social and political hierarchies.
Recent solo exhibitions include the major travelling retrospective ‘Magnetized Space’ at Serpentine Gallery, London, England (2011); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2011), and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2012), as well as a presentation at Museu de Arte Contemporânea Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2000). Her work also was included in the 53rd Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2009).

Isabel Lewis Offers an Immersive Experience at Dia Art Foundation  (The New York Times)