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.