Americas Society Announces Upcoming Exhibitions for 2014

2014 Exhibition Schedule:

• Within the Light Trap: Cruz-Diez in Black and White: February 4 - March 22, 2014
• The Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas: April 29 - July 26, 2014
• MODERNO: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940s-1970s: September 10 - December 13, 2014

New York, December 11, 2013—Americas Society, the premier organization dedicated to increase public awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of the Americas, is pleased to announce its 2014 programming featuring three major exhibitions, each of which will be accompanied by a series of public and educational programs featuring outstanding artists, curators, critics and scholars.

Within the Light Trap: Cruz-Diez in Black and White
Curated by Gabriela Rangel. Assisted by Christina De León
On view: February 4 - March 22, 2014
Wednesday to Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

Venezuelan-born, Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez’s longstanding research in color has won him an international reputation as one of the most important figures of Latin American modernism. Within the Light Trap, Cruz-Diez in Black and White is an exhibition that gathers a condensed body of photography made by the artist since the 1940s, bringing an important yet little-known chapter of his practice to the New York audience. Cruz-Diez’s analysis of the transformative possibilities of color is deeply rooted in his particular interest in mechanical reproduction, as is evident in his study of the technical processes of the Polaroid photograph, film, and black-and-white photography. In many interviews, the artist has affirmed his creative debt to photography as a substantial source for helping him elaborate a discourse in the field of visual arts. Cruz-Diez’s empirical exploration of photography is further grounded on social preoccupations the artist developed in the 1940s, when he became aware of the rapid demographic and economic transformations caused by modernization in his native Venezuela. Since then, he has documented everyday life rituals linked to the vernacular, such as local folklore festivities in rural communities and the viral emergence of shantytowns in Caracas. He has portrayed important intellectual figures linked to popular culture and music, who were key interlocutors for him and his generation. The exhibition also includes paintings that reflect Cruz-Diez’s early approach to realism, nurtured by political and aesthetic debates undertaken by Venezuelan artists after the Second World War.

The Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas
Curated by Georgia de Havenon and Dr. Alicia Lubowski-Jahn
On view: April 29 - July 26, 2014
Wednesday to Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

The Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas, is the first exhibition in New York, and only the second exhibition during the last thirty-seven years in the United States, to focus extensively on Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), the Prussian scientist, explorer, diplomat, and author who traversed about 6,000 miles, journeying through the Spanish American colonies to observe South American nature. Humboldt's American publications were the inspiration for a number of artists both in the United States and Europe who followed in his footsteps to Central and South America. Americas Society’s exhibition, publication, and related programs will shed new light on Alexander von Humboldt by demonstrating his little known yet widespread impact on visual art and, in particular, nineteenth-century American art. The project will examine how Humboldt’s scientific ideas about nature relate to landscape aesthetics and imagery as well as how they were interpreted by landscape artists.

The Unity of Nature will display the work of North American artist travelers, including Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Louis Rémy Mignot (1831-70), Titian Ramsay Peale (1799–1835), and Norton Bush (1834–94), as well as a selection of European artists, such as Ferdinand Bellerman (1814–89), Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802–58), Albert Berg (1820–73), Anton Goering (1836–1905), and Eduard Ender (1822–83), and the Victorian woman traveler Adela Breton (1849–1923). The exhibition will also include works by New York-based artist Mark Dion, who will explore the tradition of scientific field drawing and offer a contemporary response to Humboldt’s classification of nature.

MODERNO: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940s-1970s
Curated by Jorge F. Rivas Pérez, Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, and Ana Elena Mallet
On View: September 10 - December 13, 2014
Wednesday to Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

MODERNO is the first exhibition entirely devoted to Latin American modern design in the private sphere. It showcases how design, one of the most innovative chapters in the history of Latin American art, deeply transformed the domestic landscape on a period marked by major stylistic developments and political tensions brought by the Cold War. MODERNO: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940s-1970s represents a serious effort to introduce and reposition Modern Latin American design in the global context of Modern design. Until now no institution has organized an exhibition devoted to this subject. Starting from the aftermath of WWII, the beginning of a new era of world’s optimism and international cooperation, this exhibition is aimed to showcase a quarter of a century of design for the home from Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. The selection ranges from furniture to household items, either one-of-a-kind or mass-produced, that furnished homes in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Among the designers whose work will be featured in the show are: Miguel Arroyo (1920-2004), Michael Van Beuren (1911-2004), Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998), Jose Carlos Bornancini (1923-2008), Jose Zanine Caldas (1918-2001), Los Castillo (f. 1934), Cristina Merchán (1926-1987), Clara Porset (1932-1981), Nelson Ivan Petzold (b. 1931), Sergio Rodrigues (b. 1927), Cynthia Sargent (1922-2006), William Spratling (1900-1967), Don Shoemaker, Joaquim Tenreiro (1906-1992), Felix Tissot (1909-1989), Tecla Tofano (1927-1995), Pedro Ramirez Vasquez (1919-2013), María Luisa Zuloaga de Tovar (1902-1992), Seka Severin de Tudja (1923-2007), Cornelis Zitman (b. 1926), and Jorge Zalszupin (b. 1922). By bringing together a small but representative group of household objects that include furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and printed material–many exhibited for the first time–this show and its accompanying publication will introduce the field, and demonstrate the breath of the materials, to New York–and United States–audiences. This exhibition aims to make a lasting contribution to our understanding of Modern Latin America visual culture.

 Image credit: La burriquita, El Silencio, Caracas, Venezuela, 1952. Image courtesy of the artist.

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