Roberto Burle Marx

Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) was a twentieth-century Renaissance man: a landscape architect, painter, sculptor, set designer, environmental activist. During his over sixty-year career, he designed more than 2,000 gardens around the world and, on expeditions, discovered almost 50 new plant species. At the same time, he created independent objects of extraordinary beauty.

In his home country Brazil, Burle Marx, along with the architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, is revered as a pioneer of Brazilian Modernism. His designs for the capital Brasília and above all for Rio de Janeiro have had a lasting impact on the face of these cities. His revolutionary landscape architecture, oriented to abstract painting, has an international reputation even today. The rest of his oeuvre, however, is virtually unknown.

After its premiere at New York’s The Jewish Museum in 2016, the show “Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist” is now on view at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle. The exhibition illustrates the full range of his artistic production, seen in Germany for the first time, and erases boundaries between the different media and disciplines. The exhibition was organized by The Jewish Museum, New York, and was made possible, in part, by Deutsche Bank, The Emanuel and Riane Gruss Charitable Foundation, and other generous supporters.