GP
: Nel 1951 Lina Bo Bardi – che in Italia si è formata, senza avervi realizzato alcuna delle opere che l’hanno resa famosa – abbandona la nazionalità italiana per scegliere quella brasiliana; in seguito più volte parla di questa scelta come atto liberatorio di un “eccesso di passato” dell’Italia rispetto al “giovane” Brasile. Qual è il senso, dunque, della mostra romana?
Margherita Guccione: ll Brasile per Lina Bo Bardi era un “paese inimmaginabile, dove tutto era possibile”. Un paese giovane segnato da un grande sviluppo economico e da tradizioni, storie locali e ambiente naturale che si manifestano con una forza impetuosa, tanto più a occhi stranieri. È sulla base di queste considerazioni, piuttosto che su un rifiuto del proprio paese d’origine, che Bo Bardi decide di stabilirsi definitivamente nel paese sudamericano. Lasciata l’Italia lacerata dalla guerra, dove la pur fervente attività legata alla ricostruzione avrebbe probabilmente concesso poco spazio a una giovane professionista in un mondo, quello dell’architettura, ancora molto maschile, Bo Bardi arriva in Brasile senza un progetto di vita ben definito. La sua non è una scelta a priori di allontanarsi per sempre dall’Italia dove è nata e si è formata. Senza gli studi alla Facoltà di Architettura di Roma, senza le relazioni con figure di spicco della scena culturale italiana, senza le esperienze editoriali in riviste come «Domus» o «Stile», senza l’impegno sul campo per «rendere il problema dell’architettura alla portata di tutti», Bo Bardi non avrebbe dato vita a quell’azione progettuale, creativa e politica insieme, che ne ha fatto una delle personalità più interessanti della cultura brasiliana del secondo Novecento. Ecco dunque il perché di una mostra in Italia su Bo Bardi, avente come cuore il teaser del film che tutto questo racconta: «LINA», progetto in fase di sviluppo della startup The Piranesi Experience, con la regia di Ernesta Caviola.
GP: Qual è la «scoperta» storiografica della mostra romana?
Sarah Catalano: Il periodo italiano di Bo Bardi costituisce un ambito della biografia e dell’opera dell’architetta di origine romana che a lungo è rimasto esplorato solo in parte: perché più complesso da ricostruire, essendo distante cronologicamente, essendo documentato lacunosamente nell’archivio dell’Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, e imponendo lo svolgimento di ricerche in Italia tra materiali di difficile accesso. Inoltre la riflessione sul periodo italiano è stata a lungo limitata alla ripetizione acritica dei contenuti del «curriculum letterario», il racconto personale e fantasioso scritto da Lina e contenuto nel volume Lina Bo Bardi (Charta, 1994). Da alcuni anni si è però palesato un progressivo interesse da parte di studiosi internazionali su questa tematica, che ha portato a nuove interpretazioni, aprendo la strada a ulteriori ambiti di studio. Alla luce di queste premesse, nell’ambito della mostra al MAXXI l’incrocio sinergico dei documenti provenienti dagli archivi dell’Instituto Bo Bardi, Domus, Pagani, La Sapienza, nonché le numerose riviste in mostra, hanno permesso di raccontare con prove tangibili e oggettive gli esordi di Bo in Italia, ricostruendo «materialmente» un significativo momento della sua biografia, in cui prende avvio la riflessione dell’architetta su tematiche di ricerca e soluzioni progettuali che troveranno adeguata maturazione nei successivi sviluppi della sua attività in Brasile.
Qui uno dei cortometraggi della mostra romana: Casa sul mare di Sicilia, regia di Ernesta Caviola; produzione The Piranesi Experience.
GP: Lina Bo Bardi was an Italian educated woman, then a Brazilian national by choice, finally she marinated into African culture after her staying in Salvador da Bahia: how do you feel such an “elsewhere” might be perceived by core German/Rational backgrounded visitors? Don’t you think for instance that Hegel’s dialectical categories, as Modernity/Tradition etc. would be just unhelpful to include first, then to understand the cross-cultural work she carried on?
Vera Simone Bader: I never had the feeling that Germans didn’t understand Bo Bardi’s work because of their different philosophical background. To the contrary, the visitors were all very interested in the fact that she was able to work with different cultures and in different cities, especially in a country where she wasn’t born. All the people I spoke to were very impressed by her non-rationalist ego and her ability to work in an emotional, passionate way. Even if German visitors don’t know much about Brazil and for example the cultural differences between Sao Paulo and Salvador, they got an understanding of her thinking. Through her buildings they saw that she was very involved in culture, in everyday life and that she brought this great sensitivity to a new level in architecture. I think to understand Bo Bardi’s work is less a question of a philosophical background rather than a question of being inspired and getting excited even if this is a culture that you might not be familiar with.
Marina Correia: The way in which Bo Bardi developed her Italian modern background within Brazilian culture cannot be perceived in her work by a clear or single distinction in her design language. Similarly, African culture doesn’t manifest itself in Brazil by opposition, but produces a new culture. There is not a defined line between tradition as past and a new modernity as present. On the contrary, it comes together in her architecture as a unique response to site and place, each time with a different formal language. In that respect, the German visitor is not presented with a clear distinction between modernity and tradition and will not encounter a clear separation, as dialectical categories. Bo Bardi dissolves that and the exhibition searched to maintain this aspect of her work.
GP: Is it there any new issue that Lina Bo Bardi 100 exhibition has contributed to find out?
VSB: Our goal in the exhibition was to present Bo Bardi’s work to a German and international audience who has never had the chance to get in touch with her personality and her work. Especially in Germany, very few people knew Bo Bardi prior. Therefore we focused mainly on her architectural projects showing her drawings, photos of buildings, technical drawings and models. We also ventured into her writings, her curatorial work and her connections to film and theater. For us, these were the most important disciplines, which strongly influenced her way of architectural thinking. In this way the visitors were able to gain a first idea of how complex the personality of Bo Bardi was. Additionally, we wanted to give a deeper insight of Bo Bardi, the person. We produced several interviews for the exhibition with individuals who knew her from different moments in her life. The current director of SESC-Pompeia has another memory of Bo Bardi than her artist friend Edmar de Almeida from Salvador. Their experiences also differ from the ones of her former assistants Marcelo Suzuki, Marcel Ferraz and André Vainer or Ze Celso from the Teatro Oficina. With their different viewpoints, they all talked about their personal connection to Bo Bardi. They all helped to create a very warm and personal atmosphere in the exhibition. And this was our main approach to Bo Bardi. We didn’t want to copy her curatorial work. On the contrary, we preferred to get very close to her ideas and mentality. Therefore, I worked together with many people, such as Marina Correia, a Brazilian architect, who designed the exhibition. She carefully chose the exhibition materials and created both tiny and open spaces. Or we asked the photographer Markus Lanz to take pictures of her buildings from new perspectives. He did a great job. In his photos you can see perfectly how Bo Bardi designed every little detail to create an open space in the buildings for the whole of society. We tried to make her way of thinking tangible as well by having four students of the arts and crafts school in Munich inscribe all the exhibition texts manually on the walls, a process that took three weeks alone. In this way we began an entire process in Bo Bardi’s fashion, much like she did, for instance, for the SESC Pompeia. Her point is proven right. It is the long-term cooperation with different people and workers, which give the space a warm atmosphere. It was an experiment, but I think we succeeded very well.
Concerning the content: we also produced a catalogue accompanying the exhibition. For it, we asked Renato Anelli, Zeuler Lima, Olivia de Oliveira and many other experts to contextualize Bo Bardi’s work. They all conducted research in different directions to frame her architectural projects. To conclude, I can say that we worked on multiple levels to generate a new perspective on Bo Bardi.
MC: During the last year we have seen in São Paulo a series of exhibitions on Bo Bardi. Each one of them highlighting different aspects of her work, exhibition design, furniture design, politics, graphic design, etc, but none of them presented her oeuvre in it’s integral form. The curatorial standpoint of Lina Bo Bardi 100 covers every aspect of her trajectory as an architect, bringing her oeuvre to the visitor in a complete and open form, exposing her process of thinking through her original sketches as well as her completed buildings through models, drawings and photographs. Differently from the exhibitions done inside Brazil, her work was not curated to reveal one interpretation, but allows each visitor to compose a completely new reading. This new reading is certainly enriched by cultural displacement.
Lina Bo Bardi in Italia. MAXXI, Roma – a cura di Margherita Guccione, consulenza scientifica di Sarah Catalano e Ernesta Caviola. Fino al 3 maggio 2015.
Lina Bo Bardi 100. Architekturmuseum TUM, München – a cura di Vera Simone Bader. Conclusa il 22 febbraio 2015.
Per maggiori informazioni: www.LinaProject.com
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