This exhibition is about the profound sense of connection that architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) had with drawing. More than the tool of a designer, to her, drawing was a primary expressive means driven by a strong sense of curiosity and doubt. She never claimed drawing to be an independent artistic language, but she embraced it with artistic purpose. Drawing to her was both a noun and a verb, outcome and process, object and relationship.

Over the span of her life, Bo Bardi collected more than 6,000 of her drawings and graphic notes in her personal archives in São Paulo, Brazil. This volume sheds light on a small, but carefully organized selection of 100 of those images, illustrating the wide and rich range of her thinking and her production. Those drawings will be supported by images of her built work and of her activities as an exhibition designer.

According to the curator Zeuler Rocha Lima, this exhibition does not intend to provide either a general interpretation of Lina Bo Bardi's drawings or a selection of what might be mistaken as her most visually appealing pieces. Instead it offers a concise genealogy and a constellation of images, inviting the visitor to be in close contact with the wide variety of her drawings and to form free associations among the many facets of her work.

While proficiency in hand drawing has lost prominence in the arts in general and in architectural practice in particular, Lina Bo Bardi's drawings remain an always fresh reminder of the continued importance and value of free, authentic thinking and of skillful, educated hands.