Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) was one of the most influential landscape architects of the twentieth century, yet he is not a familiar figure outside his native Brazil. He is best known for his iconic seaside pavements on Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach, and for his abstract, geometric garden designs. But his work encompasses an enormous range of artistic forms and styles: Burle Marx was a painter and sculptor; a designer of textiles, jewelry, theater sets, and costumes; a ceramist and stained-glass artist. The son of a German Jewish father and a Brazilian Catholic mother, he viewed the role of the landscape architect in ideal terms: to mitigate the loss of the primeval garden and repair the rift between humanity and nature.

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