curated by Juan Ledezma

November 7, 2009 – January 24, 2010

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) presents Sites of Latin American Abstraction: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection which inaugurates the Museum’s 2009 – 2010 schedule which will offer Southern California audiences new and inspiring aesthetic experiences. The Sites of Latin American Abstraction opens on November 8, 2009 and will remain on view through January 24, 2010. The exhibition proposes a fresh approach to the Latin American tradition of geometric abstract art produced between the decades of the 1930s and the 1970s.

Sites of Latin American Abstraction: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection was organized by the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, Florida and curated by Juan Ledezma for CIFO.  

The visually engaging display of 200 works, from intimate drawings to black and white modernist photography to paintings and mechanized constructions, embrace a collection of modern works by 81 Latin American artists such as Joaquín Torres-García, Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gego, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel, Julio Le Parc, Alejandro Otero and Carlos Rojas. They created within and outside of the historical art movements defined as Constructive Universalism (1930-50), the Madí Group (1940s), Optical and Kinetic art (1950s-1970s) and Concrete and Neo-Concrete art (1960s-1970s), among others. The pursuit of geometric abstraction by these artists coincided with Latin America’s mid-20th century shift towards modernity, industrialization, urban development and a renewed cultural identity.

Installation View: Sites of Latin American Abstraction: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection. MoLAA, 2010.

Photo Jon Endow