The 20th-century modern art scene in the United States has been well-documented in exhibits. Less well-documented is how the latest trends in modern art trickled down into Latin America and changed the focus of art and artists there.
The new exhibit at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford is an absorbing immersion into the flow of Abstract Expressionism, geometric abstraction and photography into Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela, as well as a look at how contemporary styles affected the presentation of the female nude and the impact of Mexican muralists.
Edward J. Sullivan, an art professor at New York University who will come to the university Dec. 1 to give a talk, said that although savvy art collectors have known about the wide variety of Latin American art for a long time, the general opinion is more stereotyped.
“The problem is, what do most people think when they think of Latin American art? They think Frida Kahlo, drama, color, the stereotypical cliche of Latin America,” Sullivan said. “There’s a consciousness of Latin America of otherness, of exoticism. This goes back to the rise of tourism to Latin America. People go to these places in search of something you can’t find at home.”
He said the title of the show, “Pan American Modernism,” emphasizes that artistic styles and influences spread across the world and aren’t confined to national boundaries.
“There are as many varieties of art in Latin America than anyplace else. What people are doing in Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador are all totally different. It’s a huge continent.”
Some of the U.S. artists who are world-famous in these fields are represented in the exhibit: Adolph Gottlieb, Lee Krasner, Romare Bearden, Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland. These talents stand as examples of who inspired Latin American creative talents to reach for new forms of artistic expression.
The “Female Muse” section of the exhibit is dominated by the work of Wilfredo Lam, a Cuban inspired and befriended by Picasso. Three pieces by Lam — two drawings and a watercolor — feature women in communion or fused with other creatures. A woman hangs from the mouth of a dragon in a watercolor. Lam’s second wife, Helena, is depicted in a drawing in a headdress. Lam’s ink portrait of Venus is the most noteworthy melding of Latin American and European influences. It shows a fleshy, classical depiction of the goddess looking into a mirror and seeing a masklike reflection of the Santeria goddess Yemalla.
Another reflection image shows a familiar figure, Frida Kahlo, captured by Mexican photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo looking into a mirror. Cuban Victor Manuel’s untitled ink-on-paper is a striking image of a gypsy woman gazing into space, a work some call “the American Mona Lisa.” Cuban Jose Mijares’ portrait of a woman is noteworthy for the backdrop of a Havana street scene, washed with various shades of green. Eduardo Abela’s “Mujer” shows a dark-skinned, zaftig lady surrounded by symbols of life in Cuba.
The portion of the exhibit on modernist photography reflects the artists’ respect for the working classes and the poor. A brutal portrait by Mexican Manuel Alvarez Bravo shows an assassinated striking worker, bleeding onto the street. A portrait of a laborer by Colombian Rodrigo Moya focuses not on the man’s face but on his hands, roughened by years of hard work. Cuban Mario Algaze captured a woman in traditional garb carrying a baby in front of a row of crumbling, strongly geometrical buildings. Cuban Albert Coya’s portrait focuses in tightly on a crying boy, getting inoculated so he can enter the United States.
The Abstract Expressionist gallery is dominated by a huge “Ingres Nude” by Enrique Castro-Cid of Chile, who takes the 19th-century French painter’s “Grand Odalisque” and twists her into a grotesque distortion, with a tight graph pattern in the background.
Works by Hugo Consuegra, Raul Milian and Antonio Vidal, members of the Cuban Abstract Expressionist group “Los Once,” hang near a work by Gottlieb, who influenced them and whose fascination with pictographic images reflects an influence of his own, of the art indigenous to North American people.
Other artists in the show are Eduardo Abela, Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres-García, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Luis Cuevas, Rufino Tamayo, Olga Albizu, Luis Hernández Cruz, Fernando Botero, Joaquín Torres-García, Richard J. Anuszkiewicz, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Pierre Daura and Jesús Rafael Soto.
“PAN AMERICAN MODERNISM: AVANT-GARDE ART IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES” is at the Art Gallery in the Bruyette Athenaeum at the University of St. Joseph, 1678 Asylum Ave. in West Hartford, until Dec. 20. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. usj.edu/arts/art-gallery/
