Re: Burle-Marx

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Dear All:

Roberto certainly was a force of nature. I first heard about him from Bette Waterbury who visited his place south of Rio. I was working there for a week, vouchering and describing many of this collection. It was quite an experience. Roberto loved scotch whiskey and I was really impressed that the dining room was lined with cases of scotch whiskey. He must have been afraid that they would outlaw imports or something. We had some wonderful conversations each night at dinner about his field expeditions or his various projects such as his project to ornament the grounds on the new Brazilian capitol in Brazilia.  I had had the opportunity to see some of that work back in 1962 when I visited Brasilia when it was still under construction. Robertoâs collections in the wild were designed to find good ornamental plants that cold be propagated for his various architechtural plant displays. If you have not seen his book âThe Gardens of Burle Marxâ (or something close to that).  I have a copy at my office.

On Saturday Roberto spread out what looked like bed sheets onto big tables and then started splashing and spreading various colored paint on them with big brushes. It was all done in a great flurry of activity. He would then stand back and look at the work and then go back to his painting activities. He ended up with a massive Picaso-like image. On Sunday he always had a big social event to which all this rich friends were invited.  The colorful bed sheets were by this time dried and were hanging up on display. I was told that these would then be purchased for hundreds if not thousands of dollars depending on the crowd.

Roberto liked to sing operas and after the boose started flowing (and there was plenty of it) someone would get on the piano and the singing would start.

It was a wonderful week and I managed to voucher and describe many of the collections, always attaching one of my aluminum tags with my voucher numer onto the plant. It is unfortunate that the original collecting localities were mostly lost owing to the fact that they relied on wooden stakes with numbers for the plants. Most these rotted away and I was told that there  was no way to reconstruct the information. That was a real pity.