ROBERTO BURLE MARX

In 2026, Andrew Kreps Gallery, in collaboration with Almeida & Dale, opened a solo exhibition in New York—the first dedicated exclusively to Burle Marx’s work on canvas in the city and spanning five decades of his practice. In 1991, New York’s Museum of Modern Art presented a survey show dedicated to the artist’s practice.

Background

Burle Marx was born in São Paulo and raised in Rio de Janeiro. In the late twenties, he travelled to Berlin with his family, where he studied painting and immersed himself in the city’s cultural scene. Studying at the Degner Klemm School, his exposure to the European Avant-Garde, particularly the works of Picasso, Van Gogh, and German Expressionism, deeply influenced his early artistic practice. Visits to Berlin’s Dahlem Botanical Gardens also proved transformative; there he encountered tropical plants native to Brazil, sparking a lifelong dedication to exploring the artistic possibilities of indigenous flora.

Returning to Brazil in 1930, Burle Marx enrolled at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (National School of Fine Arts) in Rio de Janeiro, studying painting, architecture, and landscape design under the guidance and mentorship of architect Lúcio Costa. He also studied painting and was guided by painter Leo Putz, and the Brazilian artist Candido Portinari during the 1930s. Growing into his practice during the 1930s, amid Getúlio Vargas’ drive to broadcast a modern Brazilian image overseas, he deepened his commitment to articulating a national identity grounded in the forms and colours of Brazil’s indigenous plant life.

Roberto Burle Marx developed an interdisciplinary practice spanning landscape architecture, painting, tapestry, jewellery, and theatre design—each medium informed by the sinuous forms and bold colours that characterise his gardens.

Roberto Burle Marx Gardens and Landscape Architecture

Burle Marx pioneered the use of native tropical vegetation as a structural design element rather than mere decoration. Working in collaboration with such celebrated architects as Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, and Rino Levi, he was an integral figure in the development of the Brazilian cityscape. His first professional landscape commission came in 1932 with the garden for the Schwartz House, designed for architects Lúcio Costa and Gregori Warchavchik, with his subsequent 1938 rooftop garden for the Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janeiro marking a breakthrough for modernist design. The garden was created featuring organic forms that introduced movement, texture, and vivid colour to the architectural complex. The composition resembles an abstract river winding alongside a high-rise ‘mountain’, intended as much for workers viewing from floors above as for those in the garden itself.

Throughout his career, Burle Marx brought his horticultural skills into symbiotic play with his artistic training. The precise lines and interlocking forms of his landscapes reveal his affinity for abstract art, notably the work of Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró; many of his gardens also incorporate mosaics and sculpture of his own design.

Robert Burle Marx Paintings

Throughout his career, painting and landscape thinking remained closely intertwined. The sinuous and geometric forms defining Burle Marx’s canvases closely echo the curves, rhythms, and colours of his gardens. His work consolidated into pure abstraction from the 1950s onward, though earlier pieces toggle between abstraction and figurative modes.

The 2026 exhibition Works: 1940–1993 at Andrew Kreps Gallery, organised in collaboration with Almeida & Dale, devoted solely to Burle Marx’s painting practice presented five decades of work, charting his progression from early figurative experiments to the undulating fields of colour that came to define his mature style. Oil paintings such as Untitled (1986) demonstrate how abstract forms shift dynamically from foreground to background, creating a sense of depth and movement that mirrors the seasonal chromatic changes Burle Marx engineered in his living landscapes. While he saw nature as the ultimate act of creation, these works underscore his belief in the generative potential of human intervention and artistic practice.

Tapestries, Jewellery, and Theatre Design

Burle Marx produced handwoven wool textiles that paralleled the harmony of colour, texture, and form found in his landscapes, including works for the prestigious Atelier Pinton Frères in France. He created unique jewellery pieces showcasing natural materials and vibrant colours inspired by Brazilian flora, and designed sets and costumes for theatrical productions. In 1952, he collaborated with the architect Lina Bo Bardi, who designed jewellery with Brazilian stones for a fashion show in São Paulo that also featured Burle Marx’s printed textile designs.

Select Public Commissions by Roberto Burle Marx

• Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo (1954)—landscaping designed in collaboration with Oscar Niemeyer, intended to unite modernist architecture with Brazil’s native flora
• Flamengo Park, Rio de Janeiro (completed 1965)
• Copacabana Beach Promenade, Rio de Janeiro (completed 1970)—featuring the iconic undulating wave pattern in black-and-white Portuguese stone mosaic
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs gardens, Brasília
• UNESCO Building gardens, Paris
• Parque del Este, Caracas, Venezuela
• Brazilian Pavilion, Brussels International Exposition (1958)
• Biscayne Boulevard, Miami (first proposed 1988, completed posthumously in 2004)

Select Awards and Accolades

• Fine Arts Medal, American Institute of Architects
• Sítio Roberto Burle Marx designated UNESCO World Heritage Site (2021)
• Close to 50 plant species bear his name, discovered during expeditions throughout Brazil
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Roberto Burle Marx Exhibitions

Roberto Burle Marx has been the subject of both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at important institutions and galleries. Burle Marx was included in three editions of the Venice Biennale (1950, 1968, and 1970) as well as two editions of the São Paulo Bienal (1953 and 1959). His work was first exhibited in the United States as part of Brazil Builds: Architecture, Landscape, and Design at MoMA, New York, in 1943. In 1952, Lina Bo Bardi designed an exhibition of his paintings at MASP, São Paulo, where his works were hung on the museum’s distinctive half-height walls alongside live plants and photographs of his gardens. This was followed by a series of solo exhibitions throughout the United States developed in collaboration between the Pan-American Union and the Smithsonian.

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Select Solo Exhibitions

• Works: 1940–1993, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2026)
• Places of Being: The Burle Marx, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2024)
• Brazilian Modern: The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx, New York Botanical Garden (2019)
• Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist, The Jewish Museum, New York (2016)
• Roberto Burle Marx: The Unnatural Art of the Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1991)
• Roberto Burle Marx, MASP, São Paulo (1952)—exhibition designed by Lina Bo Bardi

Select Group Exhibitions

• Venice Biennale (1950, 1968, 1970)
• São Paulo Bienal (1953, 1959)
• Burle Marx | Santídio Pereira, Bortolami Gallery, New York (2021)
• From Le Corbusier to Oscar Niemeyer: Savoye House – Tremaine House 1949, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1949)
• Painting toward Architecture, Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art, various venues, United States (1948–52)
• Brazil Builds: Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1943)

Collections

Roberto Burle Marx’s work is held in the permanent collections of Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro; MASP, São Paulo; MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the New York Botanical Garden, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; and The Jewish Museum, New York, among others.

Roberto Burle Marx FAQs

Ocula | 2026