The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has announced the acquisition of the world-renowned Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art. The collection, which consists of the finest examples of geometric abstraction in paintings, constructions, drawings, posters, and graphic materials by Brazil´s foremost artists of the post-World War II era, has long been regarded as a brilliant window into the seminal decades of Brazil´s modernization.
Purchase of the collection is made possible by funds from the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund and a gift from the Caroline Wiess Law Foundation. The collection will be on view through September 23, 2007.
"In building his collection, Adolpho Leirner created a new standard of collecting," said Peter C. Marzio, director of the MFAH. "The collection´s strength and international impact derives from its highly focused and disciplined accretion of works, from the earliest examples of geometric abstraction to the later avant-garde work originating in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. As such, the collection is unsurpassed. The addition of this inspiring collection to the MFAH will invigorate the ongoing investigation of the contributions of Latin American artists to the art of our time. It represents a key chapter in the global story of Modernism."
Although objects from the collection have been included in group exhibitions or in individual artists´ retrospectives in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, the only complete presentations were in 1998 and 1999, at São Paulo´s Museum of Modern Art and Rio de Janeiro´s Museum of Modern Art. The first comprehensive showing in the United States will be at the MFAH in an exhibition titled Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection. As conceived by Dr. Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and the director of the MFAH International Center for the Arts of the Americas, the presentation will be organized to reveal the innovation and originality achieved by the various Brazilian Constructive tendencies as well as to illustrate specific traits that separate them from related movements in Europe and the United States. Approximately 100 works spanning two decades (1950—1965) will be featured in the show.
The exhibition will be accompanied by two publications, a 160-page full-color catalogue, and an expanded catalogue with essays by leading scholars that will accompany an international tour in 2008—2009.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, the contributions of artists from the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro axis opened up a highly original chapter in the history of international Modernism that has only now been fully been recognized outside Brazil," said Ramírez. "It has been my privilege to highlight examples from the Leirner Collection in two of the MFAH´s major presentations of Latin American art: Inverted Utopias: Avante-Garde Art in Latin America, organized in 2004, and Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color, presented this year. We are now thrilled to have this outstanding addition to the museum´s burgeoning collection of Latin American art. The Leirner Collection offers a rare opportunity to understand certain critical developments in Brazilian art which are also relevant to the history of avant-garde art in Latin America and elsewhere."
The picture shows Maurício Nogueira Lima, Objeto rítmico no. 2 (segunda versão) [Rhythmic Object no. 2 (second version)], 1970s; first version, 1952 The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, museum purchase with funds provided by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund. -- www.mfah.org
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