This is the first exhibit to bring together North American artists Josef and Anni Albers, Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt and Robert Mangold, with counterparts from Europe and Latin America: Jorge Oteiza, Manuel Barbadillo, Elena Asins, Jordi Teixidor, José María Yturralde, Mira Schendel, Willys de Castro, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Hélio Oiticica.
With common roots in the art of Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and the experience of the Bauhaus, the artists in this exhibition expanded the legacy of constructivism and geometric abstraction into a new era. These artists created art defined by geometry, clarity and minimalism, reducing the formal aspects of the work of art to a minimal set of elements with endless possibilities. They not only expanded the boundaries of art, but also the limits of the artistic object and the ways it relates to authorship and production, as well as spectatorship and perception.
There are points of contact through geographic displacement, travels and friendships that led to individual elaborations of a shared legacy. Some of the artists barely knew each other; others moved from one part of the world to another, yet they became historical points of exchange. For instance, the work of Josef Albers was very present in the Brazilian artistic milieu of the 1950s, connecting advanced artistic practices in the US and the avant-garde in Latin America.
Spanish sculptor Jorge Oteiza traveled several times to Brazil in the 1950s, where he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 4th Bienal de São Paulo in 1957, establishing a bridge between the art of the future Neo-Concrete group with the artistic proposals that were just starting to flourish in Francoist Spain. In the late 1950s, Manuel Barbadillo arrived in New York. This sojourn marked a transition from the subjectivism of the gestural abstraction of Informalism, happening in Europe in parallel to Abstract Expressionism, to a rational modular system. Barbadillo’s rationalism informed the artistic philosophy of the 1960s for artists attending the seminars on art and computer science organized by the Centro de Cálculo of the Universidad de Madrid.
The selection of works presented in this exhibition are a firm testimony that concrete abstractions, perhaps one of the highest achievements of the art of the art of the past century, do not have borders.
With common roots in the art of Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and the experience of the Bauhaus, the artists in this exhibition expanded the legacy of constructivism and geometric abstraction into a new era. These artists created art defined by geometry, clarity and minimalism, reducing the formal aspects of the work of art to a minimal set of elements with endless possibilities. They not only expanded the boundaries of art, but also the limits of the artistic object and the ways it relates to authorship and production, as well as spectatorship and perception.
There are points of contact through geographic displacement, travels and friendships that led to individual elaborations of a shared legacy. Some of the artists barely knew each other; others moved from one part of the world to another, yet they became historical points of exchange. For instance, the work of Josef Albers was very present in the Brazilian artistic milieu of the 1950s, connecting advanced artistic practices in the US and the avant-garde in Latin America.
Spanish sculptor Jorge Oteiza traveled several times to Brazil in the 1950s, where he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 4th Bienal de São Paulo in 1957, establishing a bridge between the art of the future Neo-Concrete group with the artistic proposals that were just starting to flourish in Francoist Spain. In the late 1950s, Manuel Barbadillo arrived in New York. This sojourn marked a transition from the subjectivism of the gestural abstraction of Informalism, happening in Europe in parallel to Abstract Expressionism, to a rational modular system. Barbadillo’s rationalism informed the artistic philosophy of the 1960s for artists attending the seminars on art and computer science organized by the Centro de Cálculo of the Universidad de Madrid.
The selection of works presented in this exhibition are a firm testimony that concrete abstractions, perhaps one of the highest achievements of the art of the art of the past century, do not have borders.
“This sensorial investigations about space connected humanity and transcended languages, countries and continents. The work of these artists also contributed to expand the limits of the artistic object and the ways it relates to authorship and production, as well as spectatorship and perception.”
Joan Robledo-Palop.
This exhibition also highlights a period in the history of art that was remarkable because of the role of women at the forefront of the art practice. While women have worked for decades alongside men, they have not always been visibly acknowledged. This exhibit reaffirms the work of Anni Albers and Agnes Martin in the United States, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark and Mira Schendel in Brazil, and Elena Asins in Spain. We celebrate their work, in most cases advanced against substantial personal and artistic difficulties. Their subtle abstractions enrich the plurality of this transnational dialogue in significant ways.
