“The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art From the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection”
Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, through April 22
“The Geometry of Hope” provides an overview of abstract art as it developed in Latin America over the course of the 20th century. For easier consumption, the exhibition is segmented into chapters by cities and decades across South American nations. Beginning at Montevideo, Uruguay, Joaquín Torres-García sets up a modernist aesthetic. Construcción en Blanco y Negro (1938) welcomes you with black and white rectangles. Just a slight overlap in the paint creates an illusion of gradation, suggesting some volume but remaining pretty flat. Subsequent works lose any hint of volume yet gain archaic symbols. Suggesting a precolonial knowledge, the combination of pictograms and grids exemplifies Torres-García’s theoretical system of constructive universalism.
Approximately a decade later in Buenos Aires, Argentina, artists reduce visual language to color and geometric shapes. After attempts at chaotic compositions, paintings liberated from the canvas’ rectangular frame, the paintings become orderly. Thin lines support the composition of colored shapes like musical notes on a scale. Desarollo en 14 Temas (1951-52), by Tomás Maldonado, expands the linear structures, and the painting looks like an architectural CAD drawing.
In São Paulo, Brazil, during the 1950s, optical illusions are painted with geometric and solid elements. Unlike the practice in Buenos Aires, these do not rely on mathematical equations. At the same time in Rio de Janeiro, artists use the geometric basis in complex constructions, revealing dynamic, open, and organic compositions. The prolific Hélio Oiticica emerges from this group of artists. With him, the exhibit opens up to color. Objeto Ativo – Amarelo (1959-60), by Willys de Castro, is a yellow horizontal rectangle. On the leftmost edge, a blue line is interrupted in the center. The missing square can be found on the corresponding level on the opposite side. That shift across the panel is so fast, it’s disorienting. It also signifies the movement to color as the tool of investigation.
The exhibit also moves to Paris as most of the artists spend time studying in Europe. Jesús Rafael Soto hailed from Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, and moved to Paris in 1950. It was there that he began working with optical movement in his paintings and sculptures. Prepenetrable (1957) is a 3-D realization of the Doble Transparencia series and the precursor to Penetrable (1990).
Returning to South America, Caracas, Venezuela, is the final stop in this globe-trotting exhibit. It is here that Gego, one of a small number of female artists included, almost closes the loop of investigation. Using line as the starting point, she creates kinetic compositions for objects that are simultaneously voluminous yet almost invisible. Even though they lack color and are metallic, the materials used provide a warmer context than those of mathematical equations and reflections of concrete urban environments.
It is from Venezuela that the exhibit presents the most sculptural and interactive works. Gego’s constructions look more inviting than the optical trickery of Carlos Cruz-Diez. Jesús Rafael Soto allows the viewer to tactilely experience his work. With his Penetrable, installed outside on the north side of the museum, plastic yellow tubing hangs like giant spaghetti and disrupts the view of any person or object that moves through or behind it.
This article appears in April 20 • 2007.