Transformative Gift to The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Modern art gift and the creation of the Cisneros Institute

Monday Oct 17, 2016

Introduction

On October 17, 2016 The Museum of Modern Art announced a major two-part gift from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC). Comprising almost 150 works of modern Latin American art as well as the establishment of a research institute at MoMA, the gift will deepen understanding of the integral role played by Latin America in the history of modern and contemporary art.

CPPC Gift to MoMA

The donated artworks encompass examples of modern art by important Latin American artists, made between the 1940s and 1990s. The artists represented in this gift were working in the language of geometric abstraction in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay, and include Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Tomás Maldonado, among others. The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper add to MoMA’s significant holdings of art from Latin America. Together, these almost 150 works reveal a whole chapter of international Modernism, allowing a more complex understanding of Modern Art as an international, multifaceted movement.

Selection of Images of Artworks

Alejandro Otero

Tablón de Pampatar

1954

Lacquer on wood

320 x 65.1 x 2.7 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Adriana Cisneros de Griffin & Nicholas Griffin

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Tablón de Pampatar [Pampatar Board], takes its title from the town in Margarita Island where Alfredo Boulton (1908-1995), a Venezuelan historian and friend of the artist, had a beach house. This board represents one of the earliest manifestations of the Coloritmos [Colorhythms], the series that Alejandro Otero produced between 1955 and 1960. These works emerge from an intimate contact with architecture, and their objective is to achieve the optical dynamism of color, akin to musical notes on a staff.. According to Otero, “This series of paintings could be defined as an ensemble of experiences […] whose primary interest lies in rhythm and color, in the power of color-shape […] Contrary to what the superficial observer of these compositions may think, they are not the result of a calculation, nor the product of a theory conceived a priori […] In the exact moment that I drew the sketches that preceded each one of them, rhythm and tensions, forms and colors, followed the free course of my intuition.”1
Geraldo de Barros

Função diagonal

1952

Lacquer on board

62.9 x 62.9 x 1.3 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF

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This work is characteristic of Sao Paulo’s Concretism and of concrete art in general. Its title, Função diagonal, points to its internal structure, the rule that brought about its construction: the diagonal insertion of one square within another, and the creation of a series of insertions whose starting point is always the diagonal that divides each square through its center. Thus what occurs within the composition does not depend on something outside of it—it is not a reflection of the outside world, as is partially the case in figurative painting—but rather it is deduced from the structure itself and from the initial rule adopted by the artist. This autonomy of painting is then joined with a precise, industrial finish making the work a concrete body, as real as a table or a stone: another being added to the world. This was the thinking of the Concrete artists of Brazil, who saw the work as a product of an “artistic intuition equipped with clear and intelligent principles and with great possibilities for practical development,”1 as stated in the postulates of the 1952 Manifiesto Ruptura (Rupture Manifesto), signed by de Barros along with other artists from the Concrete movement.
Ivan Serpa

Untitled

1954

Oil on canvas

116.2 x 89.5 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF
Judith Lauand

Concreto 61

Synthetic paint on board

60 x 60 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Robert Menschel & Janet Wallach
Hélio Oiticica

Pintura 9 [Painting 9]

1959

Oil on canvas

115.9 x 88.9 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Adriana Cisneros de Griffin

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Painting No. 9 is a fine example of Brazilian Concretism, centered around the nucleus of Rio de Janeiro, where the strict expressive postulates of the early 1950s began to expand and allow space for subjectivity. The importance accorded to those spaces where the structure of wide black bands is destabilized by the apparent movement of the squares is one clear example. It is as if Oiticica sought to confer an autonomous existence unto his shapes in order to launch them into space. The rough texture of the canvas used, its strong material presence, opposes the perfect, industrial finishing of more orthodox Concretism, conferring an almost corporeal existence to the painting. Oiticica explains, “The work is born of a simple touch of the material. I want the material that my work is made of to remain as it is; what transforms it into expression is nothing more than a breath: an internal breath of cosmic plenitude.”1 Conceiving of the work as a material body that opens itself to the world is precisely what would bring the Neo-Concretist artists of Rio toward an experience of anthropological dimensions, far from seeing painting as a merely aesthetic experience.
Waldemar Cordeiro

Idéia visível [Visible Idea]

1956

alkyd on plywood

59.9 x 60 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF
Alfredo Hlito

Curvas y series rectas [Curves and Straight Series]

1948

Oil on canvas

70.5 x 70.5 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Todd Bishop
Juan Melé, (1923)

Marco recortado N° 2 [Irregular Frame N°2]

1946

Oil on board

71.1 x 50.2 x 2.5 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF

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Among the major achievements of Argentine Concrete art is the development of the irregular frame, a central concept in the definition of the new pictorial object. In its traditional rectangular shape, the frame is conceived as an ideally transparent and open window to the world. Something is seen through it, precisely what is shown in the painting. By thinking of the work as an autonomous plastic object, the frame is no longer conceived of as a window, but rather as the limit of a new body, its “skin” in a way. The work “became an independent aesthetic object,” Juan Melé writes, “and its shape, both internal and external, was determined by the free play of its compositional relationships.”1 What materializes in the irregular frame is the product of a body that seems to have developed along a number of directions in space. Its form is the limit reached by the process of internal growth toward the exterior space.
Willys de Castro

Objeto ativo (cubo vermelho/branco)

1962

Oil on canvas on plywood

25 x 25 x 25 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Tomás Orinoco Griffin-Cisneros
Franz Weissmann

Composição com semicírculos

1953

Aluminum

81 x 64.7 x 56.1 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF
Lygia Pape

Untitled

1956

Acrylic on plywood

35 x 35 x 8 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Sharon Rockefeller
Carlos Cruz-Diez

Proyecto para un muro exterior [Maquette for an Exterior Wall]

1954–1965

Acrylic on plywood

40 x 55.2 x 6.4 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Carolina Rodríguez-Cisneros
Tomás Maldonado

Desarrollo de un triángulo [Development of a Triangle]

1949

Oil on canvas

80.6 x 60.3 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of James Cuno
María Freire

Untitled

1954

Oil on canvas

92 x 122 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
Raúl Lozza

Relieve Nº30 [Relief No. 30]

1946

Oil on plywood and painted metal

41.9 x 53.7 x 2.7 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF
Lygia clark

Casulo Nº2 [Cocoon No. 2]

1959

Enamel on aluminum

30 x 30 x 11 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Kathy Halbreich
Gego

Ocho cuadrados [Eight squares]

1961

Painted iron

170 x 64 x 40 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Gustavo Rodríguez-Cisneros
Rhod Rothfuss

Cuadrilongo amarillo [Yellow Quadrilateral]

1955

Paint on wood

37 x 33 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
Mira Schendel

Sem título (Objeto gráfico)

1967

Transfertype, graphite, and ink on paper, and acrylic sheets

99.8 x 99.8 x 1 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Luis Pérez-Oramas
Jesús Soto

Desplazamiento de un elemento luminoso

1954

Vinyl dots on acrylic, tempera on board, and wood

50 x 80 x 3.3 cm

The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the LACF in honor of Susana & Ricardo Steinbruch

Cisneros Institute

A complementary component to the gift of artworks is the establishment of a research institute devoted to the study and interpretation of modern and contemporary art from Latin America. The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America (Cisneros Institute) will be located on MoMA’s campus. The Cisneros Institute will support curatorial research and travel, host visiting scholars and artists, convene an annual international conference, and produce research publications on art from Latin America. Poised to become the preeminent research center in the field of Latin American art, it will build on MoMA’s history of collection, exhibition, and study of the art and artists of the region. The Cisneros Institute will foster long-term strategic partnerships with other art institutions throughout the world that are interested in Latin American culture, and will publish, in both printed and digital formats, the results of its research, making its findings available to a broad audience. The Cisneros Institute will further develop the program of research conducted by the Latin American component of C-MAP (Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives in a Global Age), which MoMA initiated in 2009, and will facilitate the initiatives of the Museum’s Latin American and Caribbean Fund in providing for the study of works of art.