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Traveling Exhibitions

International Arts & Artists • 9 Hillyer Court NW, Washington, DC 20008Phone 202.338.0680 • Fax 202.333.0758 • www.artsandartists.org

pan-american modernism Avant-Guarde Art in Latin Americaand the United States

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“In the case of Latin American artistic movements…omission…is largely due to the biased decharacterization coming from the market and exhibition boom of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States.”–Mari Carmen Ramírez

1: Antonio Vidal, Sagua de Tánamo, not dated, oil on canas, Donation from the Cuban Museum of the Americas, Bequest of the Rafael Casalins Estate, 99.0009.005 © Antonio Vidal; Cover: José Mijares, Untitled, ca. 1945, oil on wood, Gift of Martha Frayde Barraqué Collection of Hispanic Art and Culture, 2007.9.2

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International Arts & Artists • 9 Hillyer Court NW, Washington, DC 20008Phone 202.338.0680 • Fax 202.333.0758 • www.artsandartists.org | 3

Pan American Modernism explores the rich visual dialogue between 69 significant artists—including Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres-García, Wifredo

Lam, Man Ray, Lee Krasner, and Fernando Botero—from 12 countries. The exhibition highlights a 60-year period of artistic exchange during 1919 to 1979 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United States, to construct a fuller understanding of modernism as a phenomenon that spanned the Americas. By rejecting a North American-centric hegemony, Pan American Modernism demonstrates that these artists were not working in isolation; rather, the global influences of Central and South American artists contributed to the experimental, innovative nature of modernism. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed media pieces, and works on paper comprise more than 70 seminal works, many of which are being exhibited for the first time.

Curated by Dr. Nathan Timpano, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Miami, and organized by the Lowe Art Museum, the exhibition presents works of significant Pan American artists, such as Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Matta, and Romare Bearden, to illustrate the many forms in which modernism took shape and reveal the commonalities and disconnects that developed throughout the Americas. Major themes of the exhibition are framed in five dynamic sections:

Mexican Muralism and Its LegacyThe Female Muse: Class, Gender, RaceAbstract Expressionism: A Pan American Language?Modernist Photography: Pan American ExchangesGeometric Abstraction and Its Legacy

In Mexican Muralism and Its Legacy, the parameters of modern, socially minded art are explored, particularly in the development of muralism. José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known as “the big three” painters within the Mexican mural movement, are presented alongside U.S. artists Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Ben Shahn, who each separately expressed their interest in muralism and admired the possibility for

2: Eduardo Abela, Mujer (Woman), late 1920s, oil on canvas, Donation from the Cuban Museum of the Americas, Gift of Eduardo Avilés RamÍrez, 99.0009.040; 3: Silvio Miranda, La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family), 1964, oil on board . Gift of Esso Inter-America, Inc., 70.024.019

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“What matters is the act [of assassination] and its significance for the image rather than its obvious social connotations.”–Nissan Perez, Director of Photography, Israel Museum

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4: Rodrigo Moya, La vida no es bella, Región Ixtlera del Norte de México (Life Isn’t Beautiful, Ixtlera Regioin, Northern Mexico), 1965, gelatin silver print, Museum purchase through funds from Beaux Arts, 2013.7 © 1965 Rodrigo Moya



social reform through this form of art. However, not all artists accepted the nationalistic overtones and the social realist style of muralism. The inclusion of work by José Luis Cuevas, Rufino Tamayo, and others working in Mexico reveal the variety of modernist styles that developed in this country during the early and mid twentieth century.

The Female Muse: Class, Gender, Race examines the international interest in the female form during the early to mid-twentieth century. Objects in this module propose commonalities among disparate works via subject matter, rather than stylistic, nationalistic, or cultural constructs. Notions of race, artistic “primitivism,” and class distinction equally develop as motifs alongside the overarching theme of gender. Photographs by Lola Álvarez Bravo and Man Ray exemplify these themes alongside paintings and drawings by the Cuban vanguardia, who explored the female body through the visual language of naturalism, surrealism, cubism, or a combination of divergent styles. The Colombian modernists Enrique Grau and Guillermo Wiedemann similarly reveal their interest in (though differing from) European representations of the female muse, offering images that convey a strong sense of aesthetic hybridity.

Rather than perpetuating a U.S.-centric narrative of abstract expressionism, Abstract Expressionism: A Pan American Language?, proposes that this style and its legacy (including color field painting) might instead be viewed as a Pan-American language that developed through artistic dialogues between Pan-American artists, or within independent schools that formed in the 1940s through the 1970s in the Americas. It is known, for example, that European expressionism and surrealism played a significant role in the New York School’s initial exploration of abstraction, though it is less well-known that works by the Chilean artist Matta had a profound effect on the early development of these New York-based artists. Artists associated with the New York School (such as Adolph Gottlieb, Lee Krasner, Knox Martin, and Robert Motherwell), are therefore juxtaposed alongside their contemporaries from Latin America, such as Matta, the Cuban Los Once artists, and the Puerto Rican abstractionists Olga Albizu and Luis Hernández Cruz.

5: Guillermo Wiedemann, Negro en Carnaval, 1948, watercolor on paper, Bequest of Cristina Wiedemann, 91.0476.42

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Individuals who openly, though sometimes inconspicuously, rejected abstract expressionism and color field painting in favor of neo-figuration, such as Fernando Botero, Ernesto Deira, Sacha Tebó, and Enrique Castro-Cid, are equally included in this module as stylistic challenges to the concepts of abstraction developed by their peers.

Modernist Photography: Pan American Exchanges examines the manner in which Pan-American artists utilized the camera to explore modernity by way of the photographic lens and via different genres, such as studio portraiture, documentary photography, or social realism. Prints by Paul Strand and Edward Weston illustrate the value and importance of travel, as each of these U.S. artists spent time in Mexico, which had a profound effect on their individual oeuvres. Weston, in turn, encouraged Manuel Álvarez Bravo to continue to pursue the medium as a fine

6: Sacha Tebó, Lovers, 1963, pigments and wax on canvas, Gift of Richard Levine, 84.0203 © 1963 Sacha Tebó; 7: Luis Hernández Cruz, Subsuelo (Subsoil), 1964, oil and col-lage on canvas, Gift of Esso Inter-America, Inc., 70.024.042 © 1964 Luis Hernández Cruz

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art form in the late 1920s. Images by Lola Álvarez Bravo, Man Ray, and Arnold Newman are contrastingly included in other modules within the exhibition, as they reinforce photography’s desire and ability to confront themes explored by other mediums, such as painting, drawing, and printmaking.

Geometric Abstraction and Its Legacy examines geometric abstraction, variously called non-objective painting, neoplasticism, or constructivism, as it was explored by countless modern artists in the United States and Latin America. In South America, the well-known Uruguayan constructivist artist Joaquín Torres-García was an early proponent of geometric abstraction, and was likewise responsible for popularizing this form of abstraction in the 1930s and 1940s. In terms of geometric abstraction’s legacy, concrete art, minimalism, hard-edge painting, post-painterly abstraction, and optical art (or Op art) can collectively be seen to have developed out of, or as a form of, this “brand” of abstraction at the mid-century. A number of artists represented in this module were first shown together in William C. Seitz‘s exhibition The Responsive Eye, held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1965. These individuals include: U.S. artists Richard J. Anuszkiewicz, Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, Julian Stanczak, Frank Stella, and the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez. Pan American Modernism similarly examines objects by these artists, but additionally presents works by Pierre Daura, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar.

A rare opportunity to have so many principle artists together in one exhibition, Pan American Modernism showcases the significant themes and innovations developed in a dynamic modern age. The keen and rarely seen before examples chosen for the exhibition reveal the international exchanges that transpired across the Americas and validate the legacy of these profound artists, demonstrating their contributions to the history of modern and avant-garde art.

“So, while there is indeed a sense in which we have entered a postmodern, postcolonial, and post-western-centered period of history, there is another sense in which we still have yet to catch up with modernism.”–David Craven

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8: Amelia Peláez, Untitled, 1963, gouache on cardstock, Gift of Martha Frayde Barraqué Collection of Hispanic Art and Culture, 2007.9.7 © 1963 Amelia Peláez, Courtesy of the Amelia Peláez Foundation



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About the Curator

Nathan Timpano is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Miami. In addition to his teaching experience, Dr. Timpano has held positions at the National Gallery of Art, the Kreeger Museum, and the Harvard Art Museums. He has been awarded national and international awards, including a DAAD research grant, a Fulbright fellowship, a curatorial fellowship from Harvard University, and he is currently a Faculty Research Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at UM. In addition to writing the exhibition catalogue for Pan American Modernism, Dr. Timpano has written essays and scholarly articles on the Afro-Chinese Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, and the Cuban Los Once/Los Cinco expressionist artists.

About the Museum

The Lowe Art Museum at The University of Miami has since its founding in 1950, served the University of Miami, the Greater South Florida communities, and national and international visitors as a teaching and exhibiting resource through its permanent and borrowed collections. The Lowe supports, extends and enriches the mission the University of Miami to appreciate and more fully comprehend art and its history through exhibiting, preserving and publishing new findings through research on the permanent collection. The Lowe’s 17,500-object collection is one of the most important in the southeast, with strengths in Renaissance and Baroque, American, Ancient and Native American, and Asian art. It was designated a “Major Cultural Institution” by the State of Florida in 1987.

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9: Albert Coya, Child Receiving Inoculation, 1965, gelatin silver print, Gift of The Coya Family and The Miami Herald, 94.0007.09 © 1965 Albert Coya



Specifications

Number of Works: More than 70 works including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs and mixed media works

Organized by: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Curated by: Dr. Nathan Timpano, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and History, University of Miami

Approximate size: 400 running feet

Security: High security

10: Ernesto Deira, En torno al pensamiento (Concerning Thought), 1964, oil on canvas, Gift of Esso Inter-America, Inc., 70.024.039; 11: Roberto Diago, Untitled, 1947, ink, watercolor and colored pencil on paper, Donation from the Cuban Museum of the Americas, Bequest of the Rafael Casalins Estate, 99.0009.010 © 1947 Roberto Diago

Fee: $38,000 plus courier fee and outgoing shipping costs

Shipping: IA&A makes all arrangements, exhibitors pay outgoing costs within the contiguous US

Booking Period: 12 weeks

Publication: Fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, published by Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Tour: Begins September 2015

Contact: Nicole Byers, Senior Exhibitions Manager, [email protected]

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