ABSTRACT
It is tempting to talk about Burle Marx by starting with what appears to be the most extraneous aspect of his life: Brazil. Burle Marx indeed is from Brazil, in a number of ways. He is from a country whose name derives from Haemoatoxylum braziletto, a tree with wood the colour of embers that has been prized since early antiquity, and that Europe used to import from Asia in the Middle Ages. The Portuguese were delighted to find abundant supplies of it when they landed on the coasts of South America. The life of Burle Marx, like that of Brazil, has been closely bound up with wood and the forest and with plants such as coffee and hevea which made and broke the country’s social and economic destiny, as well as with nature and its lushness.
