30 years without Burle Marx: remember the works of the precursor of modern landscaping

Before becoming a landscape architect, Roberto Burle Marx was a visual artist. He created drawings, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, panels, sets and costumes for theater — all of this in a context in which artistic avant-garde movements were emerging and modernist movements were gaining prominence. In 1928, he went to Germany to study painting and returned to Rio de Janeiro two years later to study art at the National Academy of Fine Arts.

The intertwining of Burle Marx's academic background with a historical period of artistic inventiveness around the world was decisive in the beginning of the landscaper's professional career. He recovered his learning and exchanges in Germany and began an experimental artistic production in his own home, based on native plantations .

At the invitation of architect Lúcio Costa , Burle Marx had his first professional experience as a landscaper in 1932. Costa was Roberto's teacher at the time and, captivated by his work, invited him to design a garden for the Schwartz family in Copacabana. In the following years, the landscaper took on the role of director of parks and gardens in the city of Recife and took his projects to public spaces in the capital of Pernambuco – such as the Jardim da Casa Forte . In this landscape project, Burle Marx used plants from the caatinga and typical vegetation of the Pernambuco backlands — a choice that was recognized as a break in landscaping and resulted in the design of an innovative work. Unlike most landscapers of that context, Burle Marx did not replicate 18th-century European gardens. Roberto sought his work material in native vegetation, "from the Amazon rainforest [....] to the backs of country houses or along roadsides, where he collected abandoned plants and flowers, despised but familiar to the ambiance of the Brazilian countryside, like the stray dogs, without owners, in the backyards", as described by the writer Mário Pedrosa . With the garden designed in 1936 for the building of the then Ministry of Education and Health (MES) — now the Gustavo Capanema Palace, in Rio de Janeiro — Burle Marx consolidated himself as the creator of the modern tropical garden . Burle Marx's work was in line with modern architecture . In addition to Lúcio Costa, Burle Marx worked with other great names of modernism, Oscar Niemeyer and Cândido Portinari. In 1943, the three designed the Pampulha Modern Complex in Belo Horizonte, which received the title of World Cultural Heritage of Humanity from UNESCO in 2016.

Currently, Sítio Burle Marx is a unit of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), open to visitors by appointment. The site seeks to promote the work of Burle Marx and continue the legacy of the landscaper, developing research in the area of botany and preserving Brazil's native vegetation. In the 1960s, Burle Marx designed emblematic projects of Rio de Janeiro's urban planning . The Aterro do Flamengo , designed by architect Lota de Macedo Soares , is one of Rio's heritage sites that bears the landscaper's signature. Based on his studies of Brazilian vegetation, Roberto designed the park's gardens with a plant cover that is attractive to birds, which fill the landscape's sky. The Copabana Boardwalk is another illustrious work by Burle Marx — and perhaps the best-known of his collection. In the 1970s, the landscaper recreated the boardwalk, which had existed since the beginning of the 20th century. The initial layout of the beach was inspired by the project for Rossio Square in Lisbon, Portugal. Roberto's intervention changed the direction of the waves, which became parallel to the sea, lengthened their curves and expanded the graphic design. With this iconic work, Roberto Burle Marx became the author of the " greatest example of applied art in the world " — as described in its listing by the State Institute of Cultural Heritage. Throughout his life, the landscaper created more than two thousand projects that internationalized the Brazilian natural landscape.