MEXICO CITY.- 148 works by 72 artists illuminate focus and perspective of one of world’s major collections of modern and contemporary Latin American art; abstract art from collection shown in context of work by great Mexican muralists Exchanging Views: Visions of Latin America in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, an exhibition comprising 148 works from the internationally acclaimed art collection, opens at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City, on August 2, 2006. The exhibition, which remains on view through October 22, opens a window onto the collection and its particular focus on Geometric Abstraction and its legacy. Included are works by 72 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Select examples from the United States and Europe—also from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC)—provide additional context.

The CPPC is at the core of the visual-arts program of the Fundación Cisneros, a Venezuela-based philanthropic organization dedicated to education and culture, and to raising awareness of Latin America’s contributions to world culture. This is the first time that a significant number of works from the Colección has been on view in Mexico. The exhibition has been organized by the Fundación Cisneros in collaboration with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, and is curated by Ariel Jiménez, curator at the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

Mercedes Iturbe, Director, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, states, “The Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes is itself a monument to a particular and important aspect of modern Latin American art—the Mexican muralists, whose work enriches the interior of the building. By bringing the largely abstract work of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros into this environment, we are offering a rich view of the multifaceted history of modern Latin American art and culture. We are grateful to the CPPC for enabling the Museum to present this important exhibition.”

Fundación Cisneros Chairman Patricia Phelps de Cisneros states, “The fact that Exchanging Views places works by Lygia Clark, Gego, Jesús Soto, and other abstract artists in a room known as the “Sala Diego Rivera” says a great deal about this exhibition. There is no single history of modern Latin American art. Rather, it is as complex as any other cultural or social history. The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros takes a very specific slice of this history—one that is perhaps not as well known as it might be—as its focus. I am delighted to highlight this aspect of Latin American art for visitors to the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes.”

Exhibition - The exhibition will occupy eight galleries, comprising a series of individual but related presentations. Two main galleries will be devoted to Geometric Abstraction, which is at the heart of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. These may be viewed as the touchstone for the entire exhibition. The display in the first of these galleries, titled “Abstractions,” will illuminate the essential characteristics of Latin American abstraction from the 1950s to the midsixties, when many artists were engaged in a quest for a universal, purely abstract, and highly rational aesthetic. Works on view range from examples of the School of the South, represented by Uruguayan Joaquín Torres-García; to the Argentine Madí, including Tomás Maldonado; Brazilian Concretism, including Sérgio Camargo and Aluisio Carvão; and Venezuelan Kineticism, exemplified by Jesús Soto.

The second gallery devoted to Geometric Abstraction, “Openings,” traces the development of abstraction from the second half of the 1960s through the seventies, when many of these artists opened their work to more organic structures and to more humanist work with a strong anthropological, political, or psychological perspective. This was particularly true in the case of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, whose work is shown in this section along with that of such artists as Lygia Pape and Mira Schendel, from Brazil; and the Venezuelan artist Gego. Many of these works require interaction with the viewer for their completion.

The work on view in two other galleries explores landscape, highlighting the relationship of historical and contemporary portrayals of place. The first of these installations, titled “The Invention of Landscape,” will examine the pastoral, often sublime vision of landscape as articulated by European and North American painters in the nineteenth century and interpreted by artists of today. Included here will be nineteenth-century work by French artist Camille Pissarro, the German Ferdinand Bellermann, and American Frederic Edwin Church. These will be juxtaposed to modern work by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales, the Venezuelan Juan Araujo, and León Ferrari of Argentina, among other Latin Americans, and the contemporary German artists Mathias Kessler and Thomas Struth, as well as the North American Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The second gallery devoted to landscape will be titled “Cities.” The focus here will be on the artistic exploration of the nature and demographics of cities and how they grow. A landscape painting of a Venezuelan scene by nineteenthcentury Danish artist Fritz Melbye will set the stage for contemporary work by such artists as the Brazilian Vic Muniz and Venezuelans Luis Molina Pantin and Claudio Perna, among others. A display titled “Identities” will examine the responses of artists to this issue, which is especially complex in modern Latin America, where indigenous and foreign populations co-exist. The installation in this gallery will create a compelling dialogue between such modern artists as the Cuban Wifredo Lam and Venezuelan Francisco Narváez and contemporary artists such as the Mexican Laura Anderson Barbata; Luis González Palma, from Guatemala; and the Argentine Victor Grippo, among others.