Could a linear construction of history, and thus of the history of art, be sufficient in such a complex and contradictory geographic area as Latin America, where, as stated by Alejo Carpentier, the past and the present coexist? This question, posed from the Brillembourg Capriles Collection -mostly conformed by Latin American geometric abstraction and parallel explorations from Spain and Portugal in the 20th and 21st centuries, and even from South Africa, as part of the new global South- has led us to privilege a diachronic approach, with an open view of history in construction, full of intertwined temporalities. Since we know that geopolitical representations affect artistic representations and their own visibility, we suggest seeing the South not just as a region, but as a perspective that seeks to expand on the idea of the América Invertida (Inverted America) by Joaquín Torres-García. In this manner, this curatorship explores the idea of an expanded map conformed by subject-territories, a dialogical learning of the revisions of art, and it recognizes the currency of and an acknowledgement of the validity in both hemispheres of the “Manifesto Antropófago” (Manifest Cannibal) by Oswald de Andrade. Great collections can play a key role in this effort to review the history of artistic movements, processes and practices in the entire world. The Brillembourg Capriles Collection includes a selection of Latin American masters as well as forgotten or not sufficiently recognized Hispano American pioneers. Though it encompasses works reflecting the dream of modernity, it also incorporates contemporary pieces that subvert it. This curatorship proposes a non-linear, non-hegemonic vision, in terms of chronology, of approaches between quite distant frontiers and movements, as well as a dialogue of masters and not-well-known pioneers, including those which defected the hard road of geometric abstraction. The subtitle of the exhibition called El Sur global evokes the words with which Octavio Paz himself referred to El laberinto de la soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude), a crucial book that in 1950 was already addressing the issue of peripheral and marginal countries against dominant countries, of object-countries and subject-countries; a book he described in a postscript in 1970 as “a critical exercise of imagination: a vision and a revision.”
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Visions and Revisions: Sections
Faithful to its vocation to recover lost chapters of the history of Latin American art, this curatorship of the Brillembourg Capriles Collection will be displayed in three distinct sections in order to generate new visions. The first one, South-versions (Subversions) of the Grid, shows the recurrence of this form as the matrix of the dream of urban modernity, and the various ways in which the grid has been assembled—and disassembled—from the 20th century up to the present time. This section will include early and influential works by Victor Vasarely made in the 1950s, as well as other masters such as Raúl Lozza, Luis Tomasello, Tomás Maldonado, Julio Le Parc, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and contemporary artists like Vik Muniz, Regina Silveira, Alexandre Arrechea, Carlos Garaicoa, Carlos Bunga, Eugenio Espinoza, Lydia Okumura, Sergio Vega, Liliana Porter and Ronald Morán, or the Spaniard Elena Asins.
The section entitled Utometries shows the relationship between geometric art and the different forms of aesthetic and political utopias throughout the 20th century, as well as ways in which contemporary artists retake or deconstruct them. Several pioneers recently rescued from oblivion are exhibited, such as Uruguayan María Freire, and diverse dialogues are created between modern and contemporary artists in different media. There will be works of Cuban Sandú Darié and Mexican Ricardo Rendon or Portuguese-born artists José Pedro Croft and Carlos Bunga. Pieces by artists from different countries like Jorge Méndez Blake, Emilio Chapela and Anne Berning or Fernanda Fragateiro and Johanna Calle contain other forms with political implications.
The section called Cosmic Game displays the way in which the explorations of forms either ludic and/or related with a sense of positioning in the universe are present in the continent. Not limited to Latin America, they show a sphere of affirmation of identity in the Global South. This section includes works by Torres-García, Carmelo Arden Quin, Alejandro Otero, Alejandro Puente, Manuel Calvo, and oil paintings by new generations seeking to represent the music of the spheres and the existential value of games: Loló Soldevilla, Gyula Kosice, Anish Kapoor, or Hernán Cedola and Elías Crespín.
The Global South. Visions and Revisions from the Tanya Brillembourg Capriles is an invitation to wander around moments of the history of Hispano American art from multiple points of view, displaying new relations and comprehensions, and sharing the process of revealing to the world the contributions and continuity of our artistic legacy.
Faithful to its vocation to recover lost chapters of the history of Latin American art, this curatorship of the Brillembourg Capriles Collection will be displayed in three distinct sections in order to generate new visions. The first one, South-versions (Subversions) of the Grid, shows the recurrence of this form as the matrix of the dream of urban modernity, and the various ways in which the grid has been assembled—and disassembled—from the 20th century up to the present time. This section will include early and influential works by Victor Vasarely made in the 1950s, as well as other masters such as Raúl Lozza, Luis Tomasello, Tomás Maldonado, Julio Le Parc, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and contemporary artists like Vik Muniz, Regina Silveira, Alexandre Arrechea, Carlos Garaicoa, Carlos Bunga, Eugenio Espinoza, Lydia Okumura, Sergio Vega, Liliana Porter and Ronald Morán, or the Spaniard Elena Asins.
The section entitled Utometries shows the relationship between geometric art and the different forms of aesthetic and political utopias throughout the 20th century, as well as ways in which contemporary artists retake or deconstruct them. Several pioneers recently rescued from oblivion are exhibited, such as Uruguayan María Freire, and diverse dialogues are created between modern and contemporary artists in different media. There will be works of Cuban Sandú Darié and Mexican Ricardo Rendon or Portuguese-born artists José Pedro Croft and Carlos Bunga. Pieces by artists from different countries like Jorge Méndez Blake, Emilio Chapela and Anne Berning or Fernanda Fragateiro and Johanna Calle contain other forms with political implications.
The section called Cosmic Game displays the way in which the explorations of forms either ludic and/or related with a sense of positioning in the universe are present in the continent. Not limited to Latin America, they show a sphere of affirmation of identity in the Global South. This section includes works by Torres-García, Carmelo Arden Quin, Alejandro Otero, Alejandro Puente, Manuel Calvo, and oil paintings by new generations seeking to represent the music of the spheres and the existential value of games: Loló Soldevilla, Gyula Kosice, Anish Kapoor, or Hernán Cedola and Elías Crespín.
The Global South. Visions and Revisions from the Tanya Brillembourg Capriles is an invitation to wander around moments of the history of Hispano American art from multiple points of view, displaying new relations and comprehensions, and sharing the process of revealing to the world the contributions and continuity of our artistic legacy.