HOUSTON, TEXAS.- Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the first exhibition in the United States devoted to the brilliant, innovative contributions of Latin American artists to the phenomenon of the twentieth century avant-garde. Curated by Mari Carmen Ram�rez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH, and H�ctor Olea, an independent scholar and curator, the exhibition spans the decades 1920-1970, bringing together over 200 works by 67 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela. It integrates outstanding examples of the visual arts (painting, sculpture, assemblage, mixed media, installations and performances) with printed materials (books, manifestoes, reviews). Inverted Utopias ison view through September 12 in the Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet Street.

 

"In the fifty years represented in this exhibition, Latin American artists initiated a dialogue with Modernism simultaneous to its development in Europe and North America," said Peter C. Marzio, MFAH director. "Yet for many in North America," Dr. Marzio continued, "Inverted Utopias offers a first look at the genius of these artists. It reveals that this visionary art emerged from the classic conflict between the Renaissance concept of art as a window onto nature and turn-of-the-century discoveries that challenged traditional notions of science. Most surprising is the discovery that many of these Latin American works often predate better-known examples from Europe or the United States. Through the exhibition and its related activities, the MFAH hopes to serve as a cultural link to Latin American and Latino art, uniting people and ideas."

 

Inverted Utopias presents works in dialogue with two distinctive periods of the twentieth century. In the first�comprising the decades 1920-40�artists who are considered the pioneers of the Latin American avant-garde returned from Europe, where they had taken part in cutting-edge movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism. Having assimilated these trends into highly innovative ideas that set new standards for artistic creation in Latin America, these forerunners sought to make real the promise of a "new art" for societies undergoing the initial stages of modernization. The second period�1950-70�witnessed the expansion of avant-garde activities throughout the region as well as their autonomy from contemporary developments in Europe and the United States.

 

Stressing such an interplay, the exhibition focuses on paradigmatic artists and groups whose oeuvre embodies both the utopian and feasible dimensions of the avant-garde, yet inverted. That is, regauged according to the needs of the Latin American context, its quite different history, as well as its limitations and paradoxes. Furthermore, the idea of inversion in the title of this exhibition takes its cue from Joaqu�n Torres-Garc�a�s (1874-1949) strategic positioning of the continent according to an upside-down map of South America. The Uruguayan master declared: "Our North is the South." This inverted map has since become both a theoretical point of departure and a metaphor for the autonomy of Latin American art.

 

Curator Mari Carmen Ram�rez explains: "Our aim in organizing Inverted Utopias has been to show that, despite their remoteness from Europe and the United States, Latin American artists played an active role in the profound artistic redraft carried out by twentieth century Modernism. Such a generating source of new ideas regarding the nature and function of art should be compelling enough to put to rest the host of stereotypes that, even today, continue to characterize accounts of the art of this region."

 

Within this broad and flexible curatorial insight, Inverted Utopias does not rely on a straightforward historical or geographic format. Instead, the exhibition is organized into six groupings, or "constellations," that highlight ideological, formal, or thematic features of the New World movements. Each constellation brings together in one space a broad diversity of artists and works belonging to different time periods or geographic locales. "While respectful of diversity, both in cultural matters as well as in all other realms," adds co-curator H�ctor Olea, "we�as curators�must avoid falling into the trap of offering a programme, or even worse a canon, of Latin American art. What we can do through this full-fledged proposal is to compare some outstanding features of avant-garde artistic production in the region. Consequently, a number of doors are left ajar for scholars and researchers to venture into in the years to come."

 

The exhibition is organized according to the following six constellations: Universal and Vernacular; Play and Grief; Progression and Rupture; Vibrational and Stationary; Touch and Gaze; and Cryptic and Committed.

 

Universal and Vernacular - This section addresses the paradoxical desire for a type of art rooted in the vernacular, yet imbued with universal appeal. Artists in this constellation�including David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), Xul Solar (1887-1963), Joaqu�n Torres-Garc�a, Gonzalo Fonseca (1922-1997), Francisco Matto (1911-1995), and Eduardo Abela (1889-1965)�combine the recovery of native, colonial, and folk art elements with the innovative artistic vocabulary of avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Constructivism. Some of the issues addressed by these artists are the emergence of a New World artistic consciousness, the exaltation of their origins�whether indigenous, mestizo, black, or mulatto�and the attempt to create a universal means of artistic communication out of codified symbols. This constellation will introduce United States audiences to the little known work of the Brazilian Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899-1970) as well as the Cubans Eduardo Abela and Carlos Enr�quez (1900-1957).

 

Play and Grief - Play and Grief brings together artists who reject the formalism of art-for-art�s sake in favor of an open denunciation of social and political injustice. What distinguishes this body of work is its rejection of traditional artistic formats�such as painting and sculpture�in favor of openly unconventional techniques and materials. Works by Jos� Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), Antonio Berni (1905-1981), Jorge de la Vega (1930-1971), Rub�n Santantonin (1919-1969), Alberto Heredia (1924-2000), and Carlos Raquel Rivera (born 1923), among others, engage these ideas through parody and allegory, being also irreverent of social conventions and religious myths. Additionally, all of the artists included in this constellation combine traditional artistic genres and stylistic conventions in ways that yield interesting crossings between painting and sculpture, collage and assemblage, everyday objects and fine art. The work of unabashedly critical women artists such as D�bora Arango (born 1910)�whose work is being shown for the first time in the United States�and Beatriz Gonz�lez (born 1938) is noteworthy for its early incrimination of violence (Arango) and its outright mockery of artistic genres (Gonz�lez).

 

Progression and Rupture - Artists from the Southern Cone region (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil) who engaged early on in geometric abstraction and constructivism are featured in this constellation. The utopian dimension of these works is centered on the universal appeal of such notions as structure, order, synthesis, and a will for totality. The attempt to imbue geometry with a vital dimension that incorporates the viewer�s active participation of the work was a distinguishing feature of these artists� approach that both confronts and extends the legacy of Constructivism into an unexplored dimension. Proceeding from the pioneering work of Joaqu�n Torres-Garc�a and Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), the selection highlights the paradigmatic role played by the artist-theoreticians of the Argentinean Mad� movement [Gyula Kosice (born 1924), Rhod Rothfuss (1920-1969) and Carmelo Arden Quin (born 1913)], as well as the Brazilian ruptura [Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973), Luis Sacilotto (1923-2003)] and Neo-concrete groups [H�lio Oiticica (1937-1980), Lygia Clark (1920-1988), Willys de Castro (1926-1988), H�rcules Barsotti (born 1914)].

 

Vibrational and Stationary - The attempt to resolve the dilemma between movement and stasis that characterized Western art from its inception is the topic of this constellation that brings together artists working toward the utopian goal of producing an art of pure movement. Artists as disparate as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Antonio Berni, Jes�s Rafael Soto (born 1923), Alejandro Otero (1921-1990) and Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) engaged the complex legacies of Futurism and Constructivism and updated other dynamic and kinetic trends from a New World perspective. The originality of their achievements range from Siqueiros� cinematographic murals, to the serial progressions of Soto, the methodical rhythmicolors of Otero, and the physichromatic vibrations of Cruz-Diez. Gego (1912-1994) is shown for the first time in this context as a critical counterpoint of the well-known narrative of Venezuelan Cinetismo.

 

Touch and Gaze - The utopia of a unique art grounded in the combined sensorial experiences of vision and touch interrelates this constellation. Each of the works gathered here illuminates both the optical and the tactile dimensions of human experience. This comparative ensemble ranges from the de-materialized perception of light evident in Armando Rever�n�s (1889-1954) white paintings, to the sensorial synthesis of Soto, Lucio Fontana, and S�rgio Camargo (1930-1990), Gego�s spatialized drawing, Lygia Clark�s and H�lio Oiticica�s "haptic gaze", passing through the mobile optics of Julio Le Parc (born 1928), the light-and-water experiences of Gyula Kosice, and culminating in the sensuous color-bath of Cruz-Diez�s chromosaturations.

 

Cryptic and Committed -Artists working in the politically repressive countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile in the 1960s and 1970s devised highly original conceptual strategies in response to the authoritarian climate of the time. In fact, the practices of artists such as Cildo Meireles (born 1948), Oiticica and Clark, Alberto Greco, Le�n Ferrari, Arte de los Medios, and the Tucum�n Arde collective constitute one of the most outstanding chapters of the avant-garde in Latin America. In the last decade, the significance of their contribution has attracted the attention of art historians and critics from all over the world.

 

As Ram�rez stresses, "Only through the type of encompassing effort embodied by the present exhibition, its parallel series of educational activities, and its accompanying catalogue can we begin to apprehend the groundbreaking dimensions of the complex phenomenon of the avant-garde in Latin America."

 

Inverted Utopias is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Generous funding is provided by The Wortham Foundation, Inc.; Continental Airlines; Altria Group, Inc.; Fulbright & Jaworski; Rockwell Fund; Deloitte & Touche; Goldman Sachs & Company; The Boeing Company; Christie�s; and The Corporate Partners of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Education programs for Inverted Utopias receive generous support from the Favrot Fund.