NEW YORK, NY.- Galerie Lelong, New York, opened Transcend/Transport: Paintings 1965 - 1976, a solo exhibition by Elda Cerrato, marking her first in New York. Although celebrated across Latin America throughout her career, her singular contributions to global modernism have yet to be fully recognized internationally. Transcend/Transport: Paintings 1965 - 1976 presents paintings from a critical period in Cerrato's art and life, marked by her movement between Venezuela and Argentina, and the emergence of series and subjects that would define her enduring practice. Integrating academic, spiritual, and philosophical engagement into her paintings from this period, Cerrato illuminated a world marked by shifting borders, social precarity, and the search for higher consciousness.

The exhibition begins in 1965, following Cerrato's return to Argentina after a stay in Caracas, Venezuela in association with a group devoted to the study of the mystic George Gurdjieff. During this time, Cerrato's sustained engagement with Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way" and an extraterrestrial encounter inspired her "cosmovision" paintings and the development of her Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta [Strange Beings Series. Epic of the Beta Being]. In these works, Cerrato sought to depict invisible cosmological and spiritual forces within an organization of forms firmly grounded in geometry. She rendered these compositions in an ethereal yet muted palette of black, white, silver, and gold.

In the early 1970s, Cerrato's color palette evolved, becoming more vibrant. In Despolarización mutua de dos entes. (Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta) [Mutual depolarization of two entities. (Strange Beings Series. Epic of the Beta Being)] (1970), a silver and gold depiction of the titular being is stark against an orange background. Represented in shapes reminiscent of her early biomorphic subjects—such as an oval, egg, eye, circle, and ovule—Cerrato's Beta Being was "a character from the nature of our world," a spiritual presence arriving on Earth in a time of political tension.

This decade also saw the rise of what was to become one of Cerrato's most iconic bodies of work: her "Maps and Multitudes" paintings. Increasingly compelled to address the fraught political environment around her, and leaning into the pop-adjacent sensibilities of her bright palette, Cerrato honored ordinary people and protestors by incorporating their likenesses in her paintings. Images of agricultural vistas, expanding cities, laborers, and students appear alongside maps of the Americas. Cerrato organized these compositions using geometric forms reminiscent of those that first appear in her 1960s works. Combining the urgent message of the people with her personal explorations into spirituality and philosophy, Cerrato refined a unique visual language that presented biomorphic abstraction and stylized figuration as an interface for both inner and collective resistance.

In a remarkable career spanning six decades, Elda Cerrato developed a body of work that affirms art as a conduit for inner and cosmic knowledge, resistance, and transformation. Her life and art embodied multiple migrations: from her birthplace of Italy to São Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina to Caracas, Venezuela; and ultimately back to Buenos Aires where she lived, worked, and taught for nearly four decades. The political dynamics of these locales had a profound impact on her work, merging with academic inquiry and esoteric teachings to align her practice with a search for heightened consciousness. Intersecting with avant-garde movements in Argentina and Venezuela, Cerrato was associated with such male-dominated groups as the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC), El Techo de la Ballena [The Roof of the Whale], and Grupo Escombros [Rubble Group].

Cerrato's oeuvre is marked by constant exploration and evolution, beginning with her first abstract biomorphic paintings created in the early '60s and the "cosmovision" paintings that followed later in the decade. Subsequent paintings respond to the harsh political realities of Latin America in the '60-70s, including her "Maps and Multitudes" works which pair maps of the Americas with images of ordinary people. In the 1980s and '90s, Cerrato returned to esoteric abstraction at increased scale, creating works that function as resonant fields and reflect her deepening engagement with displacement and ecological vulnerability. In her final decades, she developed the "Recapitulation Paintings," layered compositions that revisit earlier motifs to explore continuity, memory, and the rhythms of non-linear time.

Cerrato had her first solo museum exhibition at the Museo Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela in 1963. In 2021, the retrospective exhibition El día maravilloso de los pueblos opened at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recent notable presentations of her work include the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023), and the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). Cerrato's works can be found in the collections of museums worldwide, including the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Venezuela; and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; among others. In 2019, she received the Premio Nacional a la Trayectoria Artística [National Award for Artistic Career] from the Argentine government and in 2022 was honored with the Premio Velázquez de Artes Plásticas [Velázquez Award for Visual Arts] by the Ministry of Culture, Spain.

Elda Cerrato was born in Asti, Italy, in 1930, and died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2023.