Latin American Abstract Art at Grey Art Gallery , NYU

Friday, 24 August 2007 22:33

New York City - A major exhibition comprising some 115 works of art from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) provides a comprehensive scholarly overview of Latin American Geometric Abstraction from the 1930s to the 1970s. This will be the first time that a major group of works from this critically acclaimed collection-widely acknowledged to be one of the finest of its kind in the world-will be on view in New York City. On exhibition September 12 - December 8, 2007 at Grey Art Gallery, New York University.

The Geometry of Hope includes work by such artists as Lygia Clark, Gego, Hélio Oiticica, Alejandro Otero, Joaquín Torres-García, and others. The exhibition focuses on key cities in the development of abstraction in the Americas: Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and Caracas. In tracing the development of ideas from one socio-geographic context to another, The Geometry of Hope challenges the view of Latin American art as a single phenomenon, revealing important differences and tensions among various artistic proposals articulated during the decades under examination.

The Geometry of Hope was organized by the Blanton Museum of Art, at The University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition and its catalogue were the culminating project of the Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar at the University, a multi-year scholarly collaboration between the New York- and Caracas-based CPPC and the Blanton, headed by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton.

In New York City, the exhibition will be accompanied by a series of interdisciplinary public programs: The Geometry of Hope: Abstraction as Cultural Expression-a Campus-wide Initiative, organized by the Grey Art Gallery and NYU's Dean for the Humanities Edward Sullivan.

The Caracas- and New York-based Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros focuses on modern and contemporary art from Latin America, and includes as well Latin American landscapes from the seventeenth century to the present day; Venezuelan colonial art; and the drawings, diaries, and artifacts of French artist-explorer Auguste Morisot. Works from the CPPC form the basis of diverse educational and public programming, ranging from programs for teachers and students to international symposia. For additional information, visit www.coleccioncisneros.org

The Grey Art Gallery is New York University's fine-arts museum, located on historic Washington Square Park in New York City's Greenwich Village. Exhibitions and programs at the Gallery focus on art's historical, cultural, and social contexts, with special emphasis on experimentation and interpretation. Exhibitions organized by the Grey have encompassed painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking, photography, architecture and decorative arts, video, film, and performance. In addition to producing its own exhibitions, which often travel in the United States and abroad, the Gallery hosts traveling shows that might otherwise not be seen in New York. www.nyu.edu/greyart