The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection

Geraldo de Barros... Função diagonal (Diagonal Function, 1952, Lacquer on board, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros). From The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection at the Grey Art Gallery of NYU. "...The Geometry of Hope focuses on key cities in the development of abstraction in the Americas: Montevideo (1930s), Buenos Aires (1940s), São Paulo (1950s), Rio de Janeiro (1950s–60s), Paris (1960s), and Caracas (1960s–70s). In tracing the flow of ideas from one socio-geographic context to another, the exhibition 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. For example, Joaquín Torres-García’s fusion of ancient American art with Neo-Plasticism was roundly rejected by the next generation of ardent Marxists in Argentina. And the rational and internationalist aspirations of the São Paulo concretists of the 1950s were reinterpreted and charged with specific Brazilian references by the neoconcretists in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition’s inclusion of Paris as a 'Latin American' city underscores the cosmopolitan and international nature of Latin American abstraction - characteristics that are often ignored in American and European accounts of the history of modern art."