On Brazilian gardens

This article was originally published on #Domus 249 / February 1953. Regarding Burle Marx, see also: Kenneth Frampton, Brasilian Modernist, in #Domus 1004, July/August 2016.

  If you’ve never seen Burle Marx’s studio, you have no idea how in disorder it is; but this disorder is absolutely creative. It’s simultaneity, a constant presence of all things, drawings, designs, sketches, paintings, fabrics, animals, fish, aquariums, statues, furniture, flowers, paints, paint brushes, etc. that interest Burle Marx or which he uses. But this man, by means of this creative disorder, is putting order back to all Brazil as regards flora, trees, gardens.

Thanks to him, the value of Brazil’s marvellous flora has been acknowledged. He is creating a national garden. He created a Brazilian garden, and it’s essentially modern – a garden related to Burle Marx the artist, painter, textile designer, creator of magnificent wall art in ceramic, in azulejos. Where we see him nestled amidst his garden sketches and paintings we notice a kinship between Burle Marx’s painting, with its “intermingling of forms”, and his drawings or ideas about gardens. It’s the same painting practice of his panels. It’s painting resting on the ground, undulated, sculptural and made with grass and flowers. Painting that lives, 3D, sprouting forth from the surface. Painting that grows, that changes, that has its own flexibility, its own movement with the wind and as it grows. It has its own scent, and changes colour depending on the day, on the clouds, at night. It can be shiny or opaque. In short, painting in transformation.

Burle Marx ventured into the lush heart of Brazil in search of new plants, and is making all Brazilians fall in love with their enviable flora: he creates gardens alongside works by Niemeyer, Reidy, Lucio Costa, Levi and important Brazilian architects (it would be better to say by Oscar, Alfonso Eduardo, Lucio, Rino, etc., because in Brazil everyone is called by their first name only). Indeed, he’s made everyone fall in love with Brazilian flora. But why say this? Because many Brazilians – and it’s quite easy to explain – fell in love through nostalgia or exoticism, of pine trees, carnations, roses, violets. In a word, of flora, and also of European trees, just as we adore their orchids and their flora. Now, he leads them all back to the love for their wonderful Brazilian garden. He leads them through art. He has taught us a new way of thinking about gardens: the way of a painter.

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