AUSTIN, TX.- The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, a major exhibition comprising some 130 works of art from the acclaimed Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), opens on February 20, 2007 at the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition, along with its catalogue and related public programs, including a scholarly symposium on February 17, 2007, is the product of the Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar at The University of Texas at Austin, a multi-year scholarly collaboration between the New York- and Caracas-based CPPC and the Blanton. The exhibition and catalogue will provide the most comprehensive scholarly overview to date of Latin American Geometric Abstraction from the 1930s to the 1970s.

The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art. Generous funding for the exhibition is provided by the Eugene McDermott Foundation and Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Moncrief. The catalogue is made possible by the support of the Fundación Cisneros.

The Geometry of Hope will be among the first special exhibitions presented in the museum’s new building, which opened to the public in April 2006. It will be on view at the Blanton from February 20 through April 22, 2007. Project Director is Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton. In September 2007, a variation of the exhibition will open in New York City, in collaboration with New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, which will also hold a symposium.

Dr. Pérez-Barreiro states, “The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is unique in the depth and range of its holdings in Latin American Geometric Abstraction. Indeed, it is a veritable encyclopedia of all the major artists and movements in Latin America from the 1920s to the present day, and there is no collection like it in the world in public or private hands. The Geometry of Hope will therefore be not only a major presentation of the CPPC itself, but also a unique opportunity to present the extraordinary complexity of abstract art in Latin America. Moreover, the Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar, with its resulting exhibition and catalogue, is a model of what a university museum can accomplish. We thank Patricia Phelps de Cisneros for her unflagging enthusiasm for and support of this major endeavor. The Geometry of Hope is testament to the richness and productiveness of the Blanton-Cisneros collaboration.”

Patricia Phelps de Cisneros adds, “The Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar at The University of Texas at Austin benefits both seminar participants and the CPPC. Students are able to work with original works of art and to engage with important scholars, while CPPC curators and staff profit from the new light shed on those works, as well as from the in-depth exploration of various issues associated with modern Latin American art. We are grateful to The University of Texas and the Blanton Museum of Art—with special thanks to Project Director Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro—for the scholarship and dedication they bring to this work, and for sharing those with the public through The Geometry of Hope and its catalogue and accompanying symposia.”

Exhibition - Organized chronologically, The Geometry of Hope will focus on key cities in the development of abstraction in the Americas: Montevideo (1930s), Buenos Aires (1940s), São Paulo (1950s), Rio de Janeiro (1950s–60s), Paris (1960s), and Caracas (1960s–70s).

In tracing the development of ideas from one socio-geographic context to another, the exhibition will challenge the view of Latin American art as a single phenomenon, revealing important differences and tensions among various artistic proposals articulated during the decades being examined. For example, Joaquín Torres-García’s fusion of ancient American art with Neo-Plasticism was roundly rejected by the next generation of ardent Marxists in

Argentina. And the rational and internationalist aspirations of the São Paulo concretists of the 1950s were reinterpreted and charged with specific Brazilian references by the neoconcretists in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition’s inclusion of Paris as a “Latin American” city underscores the cosmopolitan and international nature of Latin American abstraction—characteristics that are often ignored in American and European accounts of the history of modern art.

The exhibition will include work by approximately forty artists. Among them are Joaquín Torres-García, from Montevideo; Gyula Kosice and Tomás Maldonado, from Buenos Aires; Geraldo de Barros and Waldemar Cordeiro, from São Paulo; Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, from Rio de Janeiro; and Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, from Paris and Caracas.

Publication - The Geometry of Hope will be accompanied by a richly illustrated, 300-page, bilingual (English-Spanish) publication, published by the Blanton Museum of Art. This will include an introduction by Dr. Pérez-Barreiro, scholarly essays on each of the cities explored in the exhibition, and extended essays presenting new research on forty individual works of art. This focus on individual objects makes the book unusual among publications on Geometric Abstraction.

In addition to Dr. Pérez-Barreiro, authors include scholar Cecilia de Torres; Erin Aldana, University of Texas doctoral candidate; Paulo Herkenhoff, independent curator; Luis Pérez-Oramas, adjunct curator, Department of Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Serge Guilbaut, Professor of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of British Columbia, as well as thirteen graduate students who are participating in the Cisneros Seminar from The University of Texas, New York University, and other universities.

Symposium and Public Programs - On February 17, 2007, The University of Texas and New York University will present the first part of a major two-part symposium created on the occasion of the exhibition. This will bring international scholars—including Mr. Pérez-Barreiro; Andrea Giunta, professor of art history, University of Buenos Aires; Dr. Pérez-Oramas; Ariel Jiménez, curator, CPPC; and others—to Austin to discuss the work on view in The Geometry of Hope.

In the fall of 2007, in conjunction with the New York presentation of the exhibition, New York University will present the second part of the symposium. In addition, both universities will organize diverse exhibition-related events aimed at engaging both scholars and a broad public. The symposium has received support from the Fundación Cisneros. Air transportation is provided by Continental Airlines.

Cisneros Seminar - The Blanton Museum of Art and the CPPC have enjoyed a long and exceptionally fruitful relationship, beginning in 1999 with the establishment of a multifaceted loan and research program. The aim of the collaboration—which has included components for students, scholars, and the general public—has been to showcase the work of Latin American artists in a major U.S. teaching and research museum, and to promote research on modern and contemporary Latin American art. In addition to exhibitions, publications, seminars, scholarly symposia, and public programming, this relationship has yielded the Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar.

Begun in 2005, the Seminar has provided a unique opportunity for academic and curatorial research on crucial theoretical and practical issues associated with the presentation in the United States of abstract art from Latin America.