"Expanding the Scope of ‘Latin American Art’" - Holland Cotter for The New York Times

Eight not-to-be-missed shows offer scores of creators and local art traditions from New York, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, Mexico and South America.

You don’t need to know anything about art to be stopped in your tracks by what’s on the walls of El Museo del Barrio these days: the fantastic ballpoint pen drawings by Consuelo (Chelo) González Amézcua (1903-1975), a Mexican immigrant to Texas; the stupefyingly intricate collages of Felipe Jesus Consalvos, who was born in Havana and died in Philadelphia, where in 1983 his life’s work was found in a garage sale; and the pictographic paintings of Puerto Rican-born Eloy Blanco (1933-1984), who came to New York City to study art and learned from fellow Latinos about the Indigenous Taino culture of his homeland — a culture he ended up making the wellspring of his work.

This season has brought a bounty of historical shows of Latin American and Latino art, two cultural categories that are closely related without being interchangeable. Latin American is generally understood to designate art originating in the southern hemisphere of the Americas. Latino (with its Latina and Latinx cognates) refers to work by artists of Latin American descent working in the United States. But both terms are spacious and mutable.

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The Galleries

José Antonio Fernández-Muro, “New York Cover II" (1964) at Institute for Studies on Latin American Art.Credit. Estate of José Antonio Fernández-Muro and Institute for Studies on Latin American Art.

Work by Latin American artists who produced art in the United States can also be found in galleries. A small show called “José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer” at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), on the Upper East Side, surveys work from the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the Argentine artist moved, with his wife, the painter Sarah Grilo, to New York from Buenos Aires. In South America he was associated with an ethereal and utopian strain of geometric abstraction. In New York, the quietist impulse hit a bump: paintings were based on rubbings he made of Manhattan sewer grates and manhole covers. The show, organized by Megan Kincaid, an instructor at New York University, gives us both before and after work, equally beautiful.

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More info here.

"José Antonio Fernández-Muro and Sarah Grilo Reconsidered - Argentine Abstraction in the United States" / Latin American Forum / November 30 6 PM EST

A Panel with Karen Grimson, Megan Kincaid,
Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar, and Delia Solomons
Moderated by Edward J. Sullivan

Presented in collaboration with The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Tuesday, November 30
6 PM EST

This program was conducted in English and presented live on Zoom. An edited recording will be added in the coming months.

During their lifetimes, Argentine artists Sarah Grilo (1919–2007) and José Antonio Fernández-Muro (1920–2014) made significant contributions to global abstraction. Forming part of a generation of artists working in Buenos Aires following the emergence of concrete art in the 1940s, this married couple offered distinct stylistic contributions that helped expand the genre. Their work was shown internationally, and they served as emissaries of the Argentine avant-garde at notable exhibitions and biennials. At the height of their prominence in Argentina, Grilo and Fernández-Muro relocated to New York in 1962, where they continued to push abstraction beyond its previous boundaries.

This panel will present new scholarship on the activity of Grilo and Fernández-Muro in New York, considering both their individual artistic developments and their role in relation to Latin American art’s reception in the United States during the 1960s. Grappling with existing interpretations of their careers that celebrate their time in New York as a breakthrough moment, this panel will examine their achievements through alternate methodological and historical approaches that displace the center-periphery narrative, while also considering questions of race, nationality, and gender.

In her presentation, Megan Kincaid will introduce her research for the exhibition José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), locating the New York years within Grilo’s and Fernández-Muro’s sweeping careers. Delia Solomons will then contextualize how their work circulated within the surge of survey exhibitions dedicated to Latin American art in the United States amid inter-American Cold War frictions between 1959 and 1968. In his lecture, Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar will trace the evolution of the circle as a geometric and figurative device across Fernández-Muro’s New York paintings. Karen Grimson will then present on Grilo’s work from 1962 to 1970, explicating how her use of language, initiated during her New York residency, functioned as a proclamation of discursive agency. The presentations will be followed by a discussion moderated by Edward J. Sullivan.

The program is organized in conjunction with José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer, curated by Megan Kincaid, at ISLAA.

More info here.

José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer / The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) / November 11, 2021–February 12, 2022

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is pleased to announce José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer, curated by Megan Kincaid. The second in a series on Latin American modernism at ISLAA, this exhibition is the first to comprehensively explore the Spanish Argentine artist’s luminous transfer paintings, which he developed in Buenos Aires in the 1950s and later elaborated on while living in New York City in the 1960s.

Círculo azul (1960), Oil on canvas

Rather than isolate what the artist termed his two “fundamental epochs” in Buenos Aires and New York, this exhibition emphasizes their critical continuities—visual, material, and ideological—to reveal Fernández-Muro’s displacement and transformation of Argentine abstraction. Presenting nine transfer paintings from ISLAA’s collection, it begins with three works produced during an understudied moment in Argentine modernism following the major breakthroughs, and unrealized utopian promises, of the artists associated with Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) and Grupo Madí. These early transfer paintings represent a reckoning with the limitations of concretism, integrating directions in abstraction from abroad and incorporating discoveries resulting from his participation in the collective Buen diseño para la industria in the mid-1950s. With dizzying optical effects and expressive surfaces, achieved by overlaying perforated metal grates and stencils onto complex, sweeping geometric assemblies, this transitional output pushed his painterly rhetoric beyond the constraints of hard-edged geometry, evoking associations with OpArt and lyrical abstraction alike.

Rojo (Leaden gate) (1964), Oil and mixed media on canvas

After relocating to Manhattan in the 1960s, Fernández-Muro returned to recognizable imagery, re-creating the visual imaginary of the urban landscape through impressions of sidewalks, sewer grates, and manhole covers. Celebrated and widely collected at the time, these frottage and embossed aluminum foil works evidence Fernández-Muro’s contact with the pervasive Pop art and assemblage sensibilities germinating in New York. With their insistent geometries, found in transfers of circular manhole covers or rectangular sewer grates, and their recourse to the grid, evident in rows of pennies or stamps, the paintings from his New York period further teased at the seams of rigid, non-representational abstraction.

The title of the exhibition, Geometry in Transfer, refers at once to Fernández-Muro’s expansion of geometric abstraction and his translation of Argentine modernist painting amid the visual preoccupations of the 1960s New York avant-garde. In the show’s concluding section, four small compositions that each focus on a single symbol or device are presented alongside never-before-displayed archival materials that clarify the artist’s rigorous multi-step process––affirming his unique contributions to mid-century painting.

José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer is accompanied by a publication including an essay by curator Megan Kincaid. Physical copies are available free of charge at ISLAA and for download online.

ISLAA is open from 2 to 5 PM on Tuesday and from 2 to 7 PM on Wednesday through Friday. Proof of vaccination is required in line with New York City regulations. Guests must wear masks and adhere to all COVID-19 guidelines while on-site. Although walk-ins are allowed, visitors are encouraged to book appointments in advance through ISLAA’s online scheduler. Please note that ISLAA will be closed from November 23 through November 26 and from December 24 through December 31 for the US holidays.

For press inquiries, please email Olivia Casa, ISLAA’s exhibition and curatorial manager, at olivia.casa@islaa.org.

View the Press Release

More info here.

"Recasting José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer" by Megan Kincaid at SOUTH AND ABOUT! The Institute of Fine Arts NYU / Live Online Conversation / September 27, 2021 6:30 PM EDT

”Recasting José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer”
Megan Kincaid, PhD Candidate, History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU

Held in conjunction with the forthcoming exhibition at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) José Antonio Fernández-Muro: Geometry in Transfer—the first solo exhibition dedicated to the artist’s luminous transfer paintings first developed in Buenos Aires in the late 1950s and elaborated on a decade later while living in New York City—this talk attempts to reconstruct the connections between the artist’s early affiliation with concrete abstraction and eventual integration of recognizable imagery like sewer grates and street surfaces into his compositional vocabulary. In the late 1950s, the artist started overlaying perforated metal grates and stencils onto complex and sweeping geometric assemblies. These repeated accretions of transfers produced dizzying optical effects and expressive surfaces, pushing his paintings beyond the constraints of hard-edged geometry and even evoking associations with OpArt and kinetic art. Seeking to reintroduce this critical participant in global abstraction, I will discuss a selection of masterwork paintings from ISLAA’s collection alongside never-before-displayed archival materials to reassert his centrality to Latin American modernism in both Argentina and the United States.

Brushing against the grain of other art historical narratives, which argue that Fernández-Muro came to artistic maturity only once he was in New York, this presentation will demonstrate that his celebrated New York imagery was a continuation of his ideological commitments to an unorthodox form of abstraction and precise technical facility initiated in Buenos Aires. Examining both his processual procedures and exposure to industry as catalysts for his transfer paintings, this talk charts his waning dedication to the anti-expressionist rhetoric of concrete art that marked new directions in Argentine abstraction during the period. 

Rojo (Leaden Gate) (Red [Leaden Gate]), 1964.
Oil and aluminum foil pasted on canvas, 40 x 36 in. (101.6 x 91.4 cm).
Courtesy Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).
© Estate of José Antonio Fernández-Muro.

About South and About!
South and About! is a student-organized research workshop on the arts from Latin America and the Caribbean, supported by ISLAA. This program invites graduate students and emerging scholars in art history and related disciplines to participate in informal discussions among their peers. The thematic focus is broad and welcomes interdisciplinary methodological approaches, including, but not limited to, temporal and geographic proposals of an innovative nature. The workshop seeks to foster and strengthen further interconnections within research communities via creative intellectual exchanges. Established by ISLAA and The Institute of Fine Arts in 2017, South and About! happens twice every semester and takes place at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Speakers are selected by the student organizers.

Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia / Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX / August 24, 2021 - July 10, 2022

--With 91 Works by 72 Artists, Exhibition Reevaluates the Art Historical Legacy
After World War II --

Bringing together 91 works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s acclaimed collection of contemporary art and important loans from local private collections, Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia explores how artists revolutionized their forms, materials, and techniques in the decades following World War II. The exhibition reevaluates the art historical legacy of the postwar era to encompass simultaneous and intersecting international movements and trends, highlighting the crucial contributions of artists working in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York City, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Tokyo, and beyond. In these artistic centers, abstraction afforded possibilities for new methods of art making, sometimes incorporating performance, spectator interaction, and nontraditional materials; many artists pursued new modes for painting and challenged distinctions between painting and sculpture. Including landmark contemporary acquisitions in the DMA’s history along with new acquisitions, promised gifts, important local loans, and works in the collection being exhibited at the Museum for the very first time, Slip Zone reflects on the role institutions play in shaping and reconfiguring historical narratives.

Slip Zone is co-curated by Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; Dr. Vivian Li, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art; and Vivian Crockett, former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is on view through July 10, 2022, and is included in free general admission.

“Slip Zone exemplifies the globally inclusive reconsideration of the art historical canon we work to present. This ambitious exhibition showcases the kinds of international dialogues we can reveal through our collection,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. “In placing iconic artists in direct dialogue with their equally innovative but underrecognized contemporaries, and bringing the daring visions of all to the forefront, we tell a more honest and more dynamic story of a radical era in the evolution of art.”

Grounded in the strengths of the DMA’s collection, Slip Zone is organized in groupings of works that cover influential postwar movements in East Asia, Latin America, and the United States. The exhibition features 72 artists. These include artists from the experimental collective the Gutai Art Association; artists who belonged to the Mono-ha and Tansaekhwa movements working with nontraditional materials; artists, mainly working in the United States, who pushed the optical and spatial effects of painting and sculpture; and artists from Latin America who participated in modern muralism as well as gestural and geometric abstract painting. Throughout the exhibition, pairings of works created by artists based in different geographic regions illuminate both formal and personal connections.

Rojo violeta sobre gris (1958), Oil on canvas / Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

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Through a diverse range of strategies, artists from Latin America played a critical role in the postwar period regionally and internationally. Mexican artists, primarily known for monumental murals, were particularly important in the US as well as beyond the Americas. Jackson Pollock’s Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls bears clear inspiration from José Clemente Orozco, and the American painter is exhibited in Slip Zone alongside his one-time instructor David Alfaro Siqueiros. Artists in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela were interested in abstraction devoid of nationalist symbols for its potential as a universal language. José Antonio Fernández-Muro’s Violet Red on Gray showcases the use of geometric abstraction. Such compositions were inspired by mathematical functions, an approach championed by the Swiss Concretist Max Bill, who exhibited often in South America. Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape were part of a short-lived movement in Brazil called Neoconcretism, which departed from the use of a mathematically based composition favored by Concrete artists. Their works included organic metaphors, and eventually viewers would be invited to participate in or manipulate certain works, like Clark’s Bicho—em si. Their works exemplify the wide-ranging potential of geometry.

“Slip Zone uniquely looks at connections between the Americas and East Asia—two regions that are not often thought of together—and reanimates the shared experimental spirit and potential of abstraction in this international postwar moment,” said the co-curators. “The remarkable artists in this show were unsatisfied with the notions of art they inherited and sought new materials and processes with like-minded artists, and not necessarily just in their home country. These influential artists were risk takers, shaping their own path.”

Expanding Abstraction: Pushing the Boundaries of Painting in the Americas, 1958–1983 / Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX / October 04, 2020 - January 10, 2021

In the early 20th century, artists began exploring abstract, nonrepresentational forms for the first time and significantly changed the language of painting.  Several decades later, abstraction continued to evolve robustly, as its practitioners experimented with new materials and techniques. Dripping, pouring, staining and even slinging paint became common, as did the use of non-traditional media such as acrylic and industrial paints. Artists also challenged the flat, rectangular format—long the standard in painting—to create texture and dimensionality, blurring the lines between painting and sculpture and foregrounding the object’s materiality.  The Blanton’s collection is particularly strong in painting of the 1960s and 70s from both the United States and Latin America.  Expanding Abstraction will explore how painting was transformed in these decades.  Many of the works are large scale and have rarely been shown before.

Organized by Carter E. Foster, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Blanton Museum of Art 

Al gran pueblo argentino… (1964), Acrylic [synthetic polymer] wash over aluminum foil gilt on canvas / Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin

Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction―The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift / Through March 14, 2020 / MoMA

Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift is drawn primarily from the paintings, sculptures, and works on paper donated to the Museum by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. This extraordinarily comprehensive collection provides the foundation for a journey through the history of abstract and concrete art from South America at mid-century. The exhibition explores the transformative power of abstraction in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay, focusing on both the way that artists reinvented the art object itself and the role of art in the renewal of the social environment.

Modern as abstract | A modern worldview

This section of the exhibition displays artworks alongside examples of furniture, textile, and graphic design that demonstrate the ways in which, starting in the mid-1950s, the language of abstraction became synonymous with modernity in South America, spilling over from artworks into the everyday - to tablecloths, chairs, and even cities.
At this time, artists, designers, and architects in the region recognized one another as allies sharing not just a visual language but ideals as well. This so-called “synthesis of the arts” was a project of cross-disciplinary integration that crystallized in two paradigmatic projects, the Ciudad Universitaria, in Caracas, and Brazil’s new capital, Brasilia.

In Buenos Aires in 1951, Tomás Maldonado founded the magazine Nueva visión. In its pages, disciplines such as architecture, landscaping, and design were envisioned as conduits for the dissemination of abstraction and the realization of a utopia. In 1954, Maldonado left Argentina to teach at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, a new design school founded in Ulm, Germany, during the postwar period. There, Maldonado and other professors thought the distinction between the fine arts and design, spreading their ideas through the school’s publication, Ulm.

Both Alfredo Hlito, a Concrete artist from Argentina, and Willys de Castro, a Neo-Concrete artist from Brazil, carried out experiments in design in parallel to their studio practices. Displayed in this vitrine are examples of Hlito’s textile designs dating from the years of his involvement with the collective Buen Diseño para la Industria, as well as de Castro’s proposed logotypes for an industrial paint company.

Alfredo Hlito (Argentine, 1923-1993) (Buen Diseño para la Industria). Sketch for textile design, 1954. Gouache on cardboard, 25 3/4 x 13 5/8 (65.4 x 34.6 cm). Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York

"Exposición 'Grupo artistas modernos argentinos'." nueva visión: revista de cultura visual. artes, arquitectura, diseño industrial, tipografía (Buenos Aires), no. 5 (1954): 36–37.

Organized by Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, The Museum of Modern Art, and consulting curator María Amalia García, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)–Universidad Nacional de San Martín, with Karen Grimson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art.

"Abstract Crossings - Cultural Exchange between Argentina and Brazil" by María Amalia García (Author), Jane Brodie (Translator) / University of California Press

The following excerpt is from Abstract Crossings: Cultural Exchange between Argentina and Brazil by María Amalia García. This is the first book in the new Studies on Latin American Art series, supported by a gift from the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

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In the midfifties, abstract art took hold  of the  Latin American  art  scene. It  expanded  until  it  became  synonymous with  modern  art,  and its growing  hegemony  even affected daily life,  which  took  on  a  new  appearance.  The  visual  imaginary of the fifties came to consist of paintings with straight lines; posters, murals,  and landscapes based on geometric  structures; and dresses and tablecloths  with patterns  of squares, circles, and triangles.

This book analyzes the relationship between, on the one hand, the emergence of abstract visions among avant-garde groups and, on the other, the institutionalization and newfound  hegemony of abstract  poetics as part of the region’s imaginary  of modernization. I focus mainly on Argentina and Brazil because of the constant  and  abundant artistic-institutional exchange  between  the two countries, and because of the shared emphasis on abstraction, which  a range  of sectors in both  countries  viewed as an active force in the project of sociocultural transformation. Unlike earlier studies of the growth  of abstraction, which have addressed it in a single nation, I propose a regional approach for the sake of a broader analysis of how abstract poetics took shape in a number of South American cities.

Looking  beyond  national   borders  means  drawing   other  maps  on  the  continent by  linking  cultural scenes  that  may  seem  autonomous.  A regional  vision  provides another  dimension  to our  understanding of formulations and events previously  studied separately; it sheds light on clusters of connections  that  have been largely ignored. My approach  here has two aims: first, to reconstruct the networks  of cultural contacts between regional and international communities tied to abstraction and, second, to provide a comparative analysis of the art scenes in which abstract projects emerged and that they formed part of. Although there were major differences in the circumstances  of, and issues surrounding, how abstract art arose and later developed in Argentina and in Brazil, it shared a common basis in both countries,  one that enables us to adopt a regional perspective.

In recent  decades, abstract  art has become a privileged focus in both Argentine and Brazilian  art history.  It is the object of academic study and the subject of a great many exhibitions  at international cultural centers; abstract works have been acquired by pub- lic and private collections. This recognition  evidences a valorization of abstract  poetics, one that began in the seventies and that,  since the nineties, has become more and more important on the art market. Indeed, because the contemporary art world has focused on avant-garde abstract  works, they are now seen as epitomizing  the modern  tradition in Latin America.

Some art historical discourses have viewed the Latin American abstract avant-garde as derivative  in relation  to the  European historical  avant-garde. But in my view, the intensive development of abstraction in South America requires alternative  explanations. The formulations of abstract art in Latin America did not merely repeat the trends that emerged in Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century;  they were, rather, ret- roactive codifications, rereadings  of the anticipatory and transformative power of those avant-gardes (Foster  2001). Indeed, it could even be argued that the full potential  of the early European avant-gardes’ agendas came to fruition  in the recodifications  enacted by abstract  artists in Latin America. That  perspective enables us to shake up the “myth  of origin”  and to rethink the antinomy  of novelty/repetition, that  is, to reformulate the question  of who  came first based on a heterogeneous  vision of time  (Didi-Huberman 2006, 18–25).

Archive loan from the Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro to the Institute of Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)

Left image: Lisl Steiner, José Antonio Fernández-Muro in his studio on East 50th Street, New York, New York City, 1964. Chromogenic print from original negative, 2019 (1964), 8 1/2" x 11". Right image: Lisl Steiner, Sarah Grilo in her studio on East 50th Street, New York, New York City, 1964. Chromogenic print from original negative, 2019 (1964), 8 1/2" x 11". Both images: Courtesy of the Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro and reproduced with permission from Lisl Steiner. On loan at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

The Estate of José Antonio Fernández-Muro is honored to announce the archive loan from the Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro to the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA). Both international figures of Post-War abstraction, the works of Grilo and Fernández-Muro integrate signs, symbols, and language, and dialogue with the cityscape.

Painters Sarah Grilo (Buenos Aires, 1919 – Madrid, 2007) and José Antonio Fernández-Muro (Madrid, 1920 – Madrid, 2014) met in Buenos Aires as students of fine arts and married in 1944. They traveled extensively, exhibited their work internationally, and were acquainted with some of the most important art-world figures of their time. 

The archive is composed of a unique array of materials that includes negatives by photographers such as Lisl Steiner, original photographs by Grete Stern, Hans Namuth and Henry Grossman, international press clippings, and exhibition catalogues in several languages. In addition to their solo careers, these materials also reference the artists' participation in the groups Grupo de Artistas Modernos de la Argentina (GAMA) and Grupo de Los Cinco. The archive pertains to the time Grilo and Fernández-Muro spent in Buenos Aires, New York, Paris, and Madrid, and spans three decades from the 1950s through the 1980s. It represents their respective artistic progressions as they experimented with different painting styles and forged forward in their own careers, and simultaneously reveals the deeply personal side of their shared familial life.

The loan began in 2019 and will initially last for a period of three years. The archive is currently in its first phase of preparation and is still being researched.

Please email ISLAA to schedule an appointment if you would like to visit the archive.

"La mítica galería de arte Bonino regresa en una muestra en Nueva York" - El Clarín, Buenos Aires

En octubre, exhibirán documentos inéditos, textos y fotos históricas de ese espacio de vanguardia entre los años 50 y 70. La colección pertenece a la Fundación Espigas.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the opening of Magnet: New York, in Galería Bonino, New York, 1964. A work by Sarah Grilo, Charge (1964), is showing in the background.
Photo: © Lisl Steiner

La Fundación Espigas, mayor archivo de arte latinoamericano, se prepara para inaugurar una muestra impactante en Nueva York. Será a partir de octubre, en el consulado argentino, y evocará el acervo documental de la histórica Galería Bonino, espacio de vanguardia que tuvo sedes simultáneas entre los años 50 y 70 en Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro y esa ciudad estadounidense.

La exhibición reunirá un ecléctico material: fotos de Paul Newman o Marcello Mastroiani asistiendo a las inauguraciones, afiches de La ciudad Hidroespacial de Gyula Kosice o litografías de Raquel Forner.

José Antonio Fernández-Muro with her wife Sarah Grilo (at the center) and Alfredo Bonino in a solo show at Galería Bonino. New York, 1965
Photo: © Lisl Steiner

“El material donado a Espigas por Fernanda Bonino, la última esposa del galerista, reúne cinco mil folios, que muestran documentos inéditos como una foto de Paul Newman en un opening de la galería, donde se lo ve junto a pinturas de los argentinos Sarah Grilo y Marcelo Bonevardi; otra imagen de Marcello Mastroianni visitando la exposición de su primo, el artista Humberto Mastroianni, o la impactante imagen de John Lennon y Yoko Ono el día que la sede de Nueva York organizó una muestra de Nam June Paik, en 1971”, contó a la agencia Télam Agustín Diez Fischer, director del Centro de Estudios Espigas.

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Read more: https://www.clarin.com/cultura/nueva-york-muestra-revelara-documentos-ineditos-galeria-argentina-vanguardia_0_hCTe9Lc0T.html

"CINCO PINTORES - JOSÉ ANTONIO FERNÁNDEZ -MURO / SARAH GRILO / MIGUEL OCAMPO / KASUYA SAKAI / CLORINDO TESTA" at Galería Roldán Moderno, Buenos Aires

Convocados por Jorge Romero Brest, por aquel entonces director del museo, las obras de Fernández-Muro, Grilo, Ocampo, Sakai y Testa engalanaron en julio de 1960 las salas del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. A casi sesenta años de la icónica muestra “Cinco pintores” Roldan Moderno se complace en reivindicar la visión y labor de Romero Brest en el desarrollo de la historia del Arte Argentino de mitad del siglo XX, pero primordialmente, homenajear uno de sus grandes hitos: El grupo de los cinco.

The ‘Grupo de los cinco’.
From left to right: Clorindo Testa, Miguel Ocampo (on the background), Sarah Grilo, José Antonio Fernández-Muro and Kazuya Sakai (on the foreground). Buenos Aires, 1960

Photo: © Diana Levillier

Los agrupamientos por generación, afinidades o incluso ocurrencias de terceros pueden conspirar contra la singularidad del artista que se pierde en los rasgos generales de la escuela. En la producción de Fernández-Muro, Grilo, Ocampo, Sakai y Testa, si bien predomina la abstracción que flexibiliza rigores de la geometría y una poética aplicada en el uso del color y la creación de atmósferas intensas, prevalece ante todo la heterogeneidad estética y la impronta personal. El encanto de su trabajo colectivo se funda en las materialidades y estilos disimiles que permite destacar la obra de cada uno de ellos de forma individual, pero operando en conjunto. El grupo fue consolidado por afinidad y respeto entre colegas, sin embargo, cada uno siguió su trayectoria propia respondiendo a su voluntad creativa personal, incluso en la única muestra que realizaron juntos.

En última instancia, la selección y enunciación de los cinco en tanto grupo estuvo determinada por la confianza de Romero Brest en el desarrollo de sus carreras como artistas de una generación intermedia con un futuro prometedor, pero especialmente, en la potencial internacionalización de su obra. En este sentido, su presentación en la institución de mayor prestigio para la difusión y legitimación de las artes visuales en la escena local de la época, fue el puntapié de la premonición.

La distancia histórica nos permite reconocer hoy el futuro inmediato a tales afirmaciones. El fructífero período de Ocampo en París durante la década del ´60; la conquista de Nueva York lograda por Grilo y Fernández-Muro antes de su radicación en Madrid; la prolífera carrera de Testa con base nacional, pero en permanente diálogo con Europa y Estados Unidos, así como el éxito de Sakai en México y su posterior asentamiento en Dallas.

De esta forma, exilios voluntarios, o forzados, avatares históricos y pequeños grandes triunfos impregnaron en mayor o menor medida la carrera de estos cinco artistas que, tal como pronosticó Romero Brest, fueron reconocidos y celebrados hasta destacarse en las colecciones más notorias del arte moderno local e internacional.

José Antonio Fernandéz-Muro. Toro, 1961. Oil on canvas. 195 x 130 cm.

Inauguración miércoles 27 marzo, 19 hs.
Del 28 marzo al 19 abril 2019
Lun/Vie 10 a 19 hs

Panel discussion - "Reflections on Latin American Abstraction: Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro"

The Institute of Fine Arts is pleased to present Reflections on Latin American Abstraction: Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro, a panel discussion tracing the development of Argentinian Abstract art during the abstract phenomenon in Latin America during the 1960s and 1980s decades.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Grilo/Fernández-Muro:1962-1984 currently on view at The James B. Duke House exhibiting the work of artists Sarah Grilo (1919-2007) and José Antonio Fernández-Muro (1920-2014), the panel features a conversation between Mateo Fernández-Muro, grandson and Co-executor of the Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro, and Lisl Steiner, Austrian-American photographer. 

Mateo Fernández-Muro is the grandson and co-executor of the Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro. He has contributed extensively to the Estate, aiming to preserve and advance global understanding of the legacy of the artists' life and artwork.

Lisl Steiner is a New York resident, who lived between Argentina, United States and Europe. Active during the 1940s and 1950s Argentinean art scene, Steiner was involved with numerous art groups and artists, among them Arte Madí, Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro.  She also contributed to Life, Time, Newsweek and The New York Times publications as a freelance photojournalist.

Moderated by Dr. Edward Sullivan and MA candidate and co-curators Andrea Carolina Zambrano, Damasia Lacroze, Emireth Herrera and Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar.

Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1984  is generously funded by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA). Special thanks to the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., and Mateo Fernández-Muro, Co-executor of the Estate of Sarah Grilo and Jose Antonio Fernández-Muro.

March 25, 2019
6:00-7:30pm
RSVP

The Duke House Exhibition Series
The Institute of Fine Arts
New York University
The James B. Duke House

"Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1984" at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

As part of the Duke House Exhibition Series, the Institute of Fine Arts is pleased to present the work of the Argentinian artists Sarah Grilo (1919-2007) and José Antonio Fernández-Muro (1920-2014).

Opening February 12, 2019, the exhibition Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1984 seeks to map the influences and movements that inspired their artistic practices from the 1960s through the 1980s. The show features a selection of abstract paintings which create an intimate dialogue between Fernández-Muro’s mimicry of urban and industrial patterns and Grilo’s morphological style. In addition to these paintings, the exhibition also includes an array of exhibition catalogues, publications, documentary photographs, and other rare archival materials. This exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming panel discussion that includes a conversation with Mateo Fernández-Muro, the artists's grandson and co-executor of The Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro, moderated by Edward Sullivan, Deputy Director and Helen Gould Sheppard Professor in the History of Art at the Institute of Fine Arts.

Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1984 was organized by Andrea Carolina Zambrano, Damasia Lacroze, Emireth Herrera, and Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar, and was made possible through the support of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, Cecilia de Torres Ltd. New York, and The Estate of Sarah Grilo and José Antonio Fernández-Muro. This exhibition is generously funded by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

Opening: February 12, 2019 - 7.30 pm

Exhibition Dates: February 12 through May 24, 2019

Exhibition Location: The James B. Duke House, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. 1 E. 78th Street, New York NY 10075

Viewing hours: Monday to Friday, from 1 pm to 4 pm

"Colecciones en diálogo. Banco Ciudad - Bellas Artes" on view from November 22, 2018 to January 2,0 2019 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Diversas instituciones del país resguardan nuestra memoria artística: atesoran, preservan y difunden el vasto patrimonio colectivo. Es el caso del Banco Ciudad y del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, que, a través de esta iniciativa, propician el diálogo entre sus colecciones para señalar algunos momentos de singular importancia del arte argentino.

En las primeras décadas del siglo XX, el género del paisaje define un ideario nacional. Algunos artistas adhieren a las tendencias naturalistas y posimpresionistas, donde el color estalla disolviendo las formas.
En el caso de Horacio Butler, la naturaleza se representa por medio de una paleta casi cubista. Con La plaza, el artista retoma el motivo del árbol, una lectura que nos reenvía a los maestros de principios de siglo, conformando así una serie que permite dar cuenta de la mirada y los estilos de una generación. En esa confrontación con la naturaleza, Juan Carlos Castagnino muestra la animalidad en toda su potencia salvaje en su obra Caballos en la llanura. Desde otra vertiente, María Martorell se interroga por las formas matemáticas más simples puestas en acción en Paralelas en movimiento, mientras que José Antonio Fernández-Muro abunda con su investigación geométrica abstracta en Dos círculos. La experimentación con los elementos básicos del arte también es postulada por Martha Peluffo, quien en Las pieles de la tierra, coloca el volumen como tópico.

Aspiramos a que estas obras, al ser conjugadas con sus pares en el Bellas Artes, permitan el disfrute del público de un patrimonio público exquisito.
 

Andrés Duprat
Director
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Dos círculos (1961), Oil on canvas / Colección Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires