NEW YORK, NY.- The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art announced the opening of “From Surface to Space”: Max Bill and Concrete Sculpture in Buenos Aires, curated by Francesca Ferrari. The first in a new series on Latin American modernism at ISLAA, this exhibition explores concurrent experiments in concrete sculpture amid the formative, transnational creative dialogue between the Swiss artist Max Bill and the Argentine avant-garde from 1946 to 1955. It is conceived as a complementary exhibition to max bill global, curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer and Myriam Dössinger, at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland.
“From Surface to Space” brings together sculptures by Carmelo Arden Quin (Uruguayan, 1913–2010), Max Bill (Swiss, 1908–1994), Claudio Girola (Argentine, 1923–1994), Enio Iommi (Argentine, 1926–2013), and Gyula Kosice (Argentine, 1924–2016), as well as a series of drawings by Lidy Prati (Argentine, 1921–2008). As members of the groups Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) and Madí, the Buenos Aires–based artists Arden Quin, Girola, Iommi, Kosice, and Prati circulated, revised, and expanded Bill’s notions of concretism in Latin America. This exhibition frames Bill’s relationship to his Argentine peers as one of reciprocal impact, revealing how artists in Argentina reacted to Bill’s theories while Bill reoriented his characterization of concrete art after encountering their work.
“From Surface to Space”: Max Bill and Concrete Sculpture in Buenos Aires is accompanied by a publication including an essay by curator Francesca Ferrari. Physical copies are available free of charge at ISLAA and for download online.
In conjunction with the exhibition, ISLAA will present a series of live online public programs and pre-recorded lectures that will examine Bill’s broader legacy in Latin America and provide further insight into the featured artists’ work. For more information, please visit the exhibition page.
Francesca Ferrari is a PhD candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She holds an MA in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in art history and English from the Université de Lausanne. Her research and publications focus on twentieth-century European and Latin American art. Her doctoral dissertation, tentatively titled “Animated Geometries,” explores the convergence of geometric abstraction, the human body, and movement on a transnational scale during the 1920s. She has received fellowships from the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin; and the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
