A selection of 47 works from the Modern and contemporary art collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, opens at Mexico City´s Museo de Arte Moderno, the first in an anticipated series of collaborations between the two museums.
The exhibition, Constructing the Void: Modern Art from the MFAH Collection, features paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installation and mixed-media pieces by 36 American, European, and Latin American masters including Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Joaquín Torres-García, and Mira Schendel. The exhibition will be on view through March 9, 2008.
Known for its outstanding collection of Mexican Modern masterworks, the Museo de Arte Moderno is interested in broadening the presentation of Modern and contemporary art in Mexico, where works by European, North American, and South American artists have not been widely shown. That interest complements the MFAH´s mission of fostering an appreciation and understanding of Latin American and Latino visual arts and their role in the development of Modern and contemporary art.
"The MFAH is pleased to share these important works from its collection with the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, and to have another source telling the story of global Modernism and contemporary art," said Peter C. Marzio, MFAH director. "This collaboration will strengthen the efforts of both institutions."
The exchange is directed by Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the MFAH, with assistance from Gilbert Vicario, assistant curator of Latin American art.
The Mexico City exhibition comprises works from Constructing Abstraction: Selections from the Permanent Collection, a companion exhibition to Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection shown this spring at the MFAH, along with ten additional works from the MFAH collection selected by Osvaldo Sanchez, MAM director. More than half the works in the show are by Brazilian and American artists. Other countries represented are Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia.
Works in the exhibition range from the 1918 painting Composition with Grid #1 by the Dutch master Mondrian to Ring of Flint, 1996, a circular floor installation of English flint by British artist Richard Long. German-born American artist Albers is represented by five geometric paintings, including three versions of Homage to the Square from three different decades. Among the paintings by Brazilian artists are Schendel´s Untitled (1962), Helio Oiticica´s Red going through white (1958), and Willys de Castro´s Active Object (c. 1960). Three works by Venezuelan artist Cruz-Diez are in the show, including his color-bending Physichromatics No. 48 and Physichromatics No. 23, both 1961. Uruguayan artist Torres-Garcia is represented by his painted wood construction, Plastic Object (1929) and Abstract Tubular Composition, a 1937 tempera painting.
Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Under the auspices of the MFAH, the mission of the Latin American art department and its research arm, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), is to collect, exhibit, and research art, and educate audiences, on the diverse artistic production of Latin Americans and Latinos, which includes artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as from the United States.
Since establishing the Latin American art department and ICAA in 2001, the museum has organized major exhibitions of Latin American art and several international symposia and published the proceedings in bilingual format. Additionally, a number of important works by artists such as Joaquín Torres-García, Armando Reverón, Xul Solar, Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero, Antonio Berni, Oscar Muñoz, León Ferrari, Gunther Gerszo, Beatriz González, Gego, Mira Schendel, and Julio Le Parc have been acquired for the new collection.
The ICAA oversees research leading to special exhibitions, lectures, and symposia. It also heads the international collaborative undertaking Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project, which aims to make accessible writings by artists, critics, and curators from this region in both digital and book form. The ICAA is committed to offering a rigorous curatorial and art-historical foundation for MFAH exhibitions and its research-based programs that is unparalleled in the museum field. -- www.mfah.org
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