Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Art and Ideas from Latin America
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Breaking the Frame

Zanna Gilbert, from the Getty Research Institute, and Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, demonstrate how Argentine artists working in the 1940s broke the tradition of painting-as-window with shaped paintings (marcos recortados) and works that even pushed beyond the wall to blur the boundary between sculpture and painting. Watch Video

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The Challenge of a Straight Line

Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, explains the challenge that Concrete artists from Brazil and Argentina faced in making the perfectly straight lines that characterize their work. Three main methods—straight edge, ruling pen, and self-adhesive tape—all leave tell-tale traces, observable through microscopy or even by the naked eye. Watch Video

Hércules Barsotti's Ink Drawings

Twelve ink drawings by Hércules Barsotti explore a radical geometry and a systematic mode of working that, already in 1960, point to a new mode of working for the Brazilian artist... More

An Archival Trail: Concrete Art in Argentina

Cite, Site, Sights
Zanna Gilbert

The Getty’s special collections archives include a wealth of ephemera, such as magazines, flyers, and pamphlets, related to the mid-twentieth century Concrete art movement in Latin America. Zanna Gilbert describes how these primary documents shed light on the inventive and interdisciplinary work of Concrete artists represented by a group of their works from the CPPC on loan to the Getty for a three-year investigation into their physical processes and philosophic foundations. More

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Painting in an Industrial Age

Zanna Gilbert, from the Getty Research Institute, and Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, show us how Brazilian artists such as Judith Lauand and Geraldo de Barros responded to increasing societal industrialization by experimenting with industrial paints and application methods that eliminated evidence of the painter’s hand. Watch Video

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