Roberto Burle Marx: the visionary who elevated landscape to art

Roberto Burle Marx: the visionary who elevated landscape to art

“A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.” – Robert Burle Marx

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Edmundo Cavanellas Residence, Petropolis, Brazil, designed by Oscar Niemeyer with landscape design by Roberto Burle Marx, 1954 – Credit: Jill Raggett

He was a painter, printmaker, ecologist, naturalist, and jewelry maker. But Roberto Burle Marx – a true Renaissance man, visionary, and artist – is most remembered today for his pioneering landscape designs. He is accredited with the introduction of modernist landscape architecture to Brazil. Prior to Burle Marx, South American gardens largely imitated European models, both in terms of their organization and use of plants. Burle Marx, however, was interested in asymmetrical designs and the inclusion of local, tropical species. He became a tireless champion of Brazil's orchids, palms, water lilies and bromeliads.

The son of a German Jewish father and a Brazilian Catholic mother, Roberto Burle Marx was born in São Paulo on August 4, 1909.  His mother, Rebecca Cecília Burle, was a member of the traditional Pernambuco family of French ancestry. His father, Wilhelm Marx, was a German Jew born in Stuttgart. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1913. 

His first landscaping inspirations came in 1928, while studying painting in Germany, where he often visited the Botanical Garden in Berlin and first learned about Brazil's native flora. Upon returning to Brazil in 1930, he began collecting plants in and around his home. He went to school at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio in 1930 where he focused on visual arts under Leo Putz and Candido Portinari. 

While in school he associated with several of Brazil's future leaders in architecture and botanists who continued to be of significant influence in his personal and professional life. One of these was his professor, Brazilian Modernism's Lucio Costa, the architect and planner who lived down the street from Roberto. In 1932, Burle Marx designed his first landscape for a private residence by the architects Lucio Costa and Gregori Warchavchik.

Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) - Architectural Review

Amoeboid gouache of the rooftop garden at the Ministry of Education and Health, Rio de Janeiro, 1938– Credit:Burle Marx Landscape Design Studio

Burle Marx’s innovative Modernist designs quickly gained recognition. His mark on Brazil's landscape ranged from the undulating mosaic sidewalks of Copacabana Beach to the hanging gardens in the new capital of Brasilia. 

But the span of his work went beyond his home country Brazil. His nearly 3,000 landscape projects in 20 nations – in collaboration with notable architects such as Oscar Niemeyer – ranged from the gardens of the Organization of American States headquarters in Washington to a redesign of Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, from the gardens of the Unesco headquarters in Paris to a tropical garden under glass at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. 

Considering himself foremost a painter, he treated his landscapes as works of art, utilizing bold combinations of massed plantings, and colorful amorphous paving patterns as his palette. He was devoted to the study of horticulture, sourcing new plant specimens during excursions from his estate Barra de Guaratiba into the rainforests of Brazil. 

Praça dos Cristais (‘Crystals Square’), the gardens for the Ministry of the Army in Brasília, built in 1970 – Credit:Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal

In 1949, he acquired 150-acre (60-hectare) estate, Sítio Santo Antônio da Bica - just outside of Rio de Janeiro. The estate was host to such international luminaries as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Margaret Mee and Elizabeth Bishop, but more importantly, it was home to Burle Marx’s extraordinary botanical collection of over 3,500 species of tropical plants collected from around Brazil. Purchased with his brother Guilherme Siegfried Burle Marx in 1949, the nursery would become his lifelong project, the nexus of his plant-collecting excursions throughout the various geographic regions of Brazil. Thirty-seven previously unidentified species were discovered on these ‘viagens de coleta’, and their scientific botanical names now include his Latinised name, ‘burle marxii’

Also an environmentalist, Burle Marx was one of the first Brazilians to speak out against deforestation. He taught landscape architecture at University of Brazil and wrote a number of essays. He was awarded the landscape architecture prize at the Second International Exhibition of Architecture, and the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects. His artwork is in museum collections worldwide.

If you are interested in learning more about this fascinating mind, checkout the Landscape Film, a beautifully artistic documentary about his life and love for the natural world.

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