Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Art and Ideas from Latin America

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

The Cultural Activist as Collector

In this article, originally published in Revista Goya, the journalist and researcher Estrella de Diego examines the typology of the collector by drawing on literature, anthropology, and even psychoanalysis. She concludes that more than a collector, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is a cultural agitator. More

Open Storage
Open Storage

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

Open Storage
Open Storage

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

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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