Reviews

The exhibition provides an opportunity to examine many of the most pivotal and foremost art practices from ten Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela, including works by Fernando Botero, Joaquín Torres-García, Frida Kahlo, Roberto Matta, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, and many others. The exhibition thematically explores the 20thcentury art movements and styles of cubism, portraiture and landscapes, Mexican muralism, surrealism, and abstraction. LATITUDES: Latin American Masters from the FEMSA Collection will remain on view through January 17, 2010

Roberto Matta EDULIS 1942 Oil on canvas 44 1/8 x 55 1/2 inch. Femsa Collection

Many paintings in the exhibition illustrate the connection and awareness of intellectual and artistic movements as they developed in Europe. By travelling to Europe, many artists lived and participated in the artistic centers where new styles originated. Cubism introduced a modern form of expression that brought together painters from diverse origins. Several Mexican artists incorporated this new technique in their paintings like Diego Rivera’s El grande de España (El ágel azul) (1914) and Ángel Zárraga’s Septiembre (1917). In portraits and landscapes, European trends set a foundation from which Latin American artists were able to express themselves. Retrato de Gabriel Fernández – Ledezma (1921) by Mexican artist Roberto Montenegro exemplifies influences of the Jügendstil Viennese School, a visual language using decorative baroque and romantic elements. 

One of the greatest contributions of Latin American art history is the Mexican muralist movement whose painters created large scale and often public works to advance social and political utopian ideals. Two large format paintings by José Clemente Orozco, El Alanceado (1947), and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mujer dormida (La primavera) (1947), are included in the exhibition.

Under the realm of surrealism, artists working in Latin America aimed to move away from objectivity and explore the subconscious. Frida Kahlo’s work is autobiographical in nature, exemplified in the exhibition by her collage and oil painting titled Mi vestido cuelga aquí (1933-1938), which depicts her experience while staying in New York.  In Chile, Roberto Matta’s paintings combined the scientific and the mythological, resulting in dark and sometimes violent canvases that interweave ideas of time, space, and motion. Cuban artist Alfredo Lam combines the cultural and natural elements of Cuban life with myth and magic to create fantastic beings, landscapes, and bodies as found in Cuando no duermo yo sueño (1955).

Roberto Montenegro - Retrato de Gabriel Ferná-Ledezma 1921 Oil on canvas 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 inch. Femsa Collection

Other formal languages, such as abstraction, refer to painting lacking a thematic narrative. Artists including Uruguayans Joaquín Torres García and Fancisco Matto championed geometric abstraction, relying on visual symbols in their paintings often inspired by Pre-Columbian art and modern urbanism. Abstract figurative forms are evident in works by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo’s Uomini (1958) who blends folk art with Pre-Columbian inspired imagery, and within the work by Nicaraguan artist Armando Morales. The neo-figurative work of Venezuelan artist Jacobo Borges titled Camerata roja (1986), simultaneously blurs and brings into focus bodies and faces in a quickly rendered manner. More contemporary pieces are represented by the optical artworks of Venezuelan artist Jesús Soto’s that concentrates on movement through visual illusion as in Salut Renard (1974) and Argentinean Luis Tomasello’s Atmósfera cromoplástica (1980) that plays with the idea of optical stability through the use of color and geometric forms in combination with the angle from which it is viewed.

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