1940s

Art historian Anna Pravdová delves deep into the MoMA Archives to highlight the Museum’s first exhibition of Czech art.

Curator Laura Hoptman comments on the importance of Raúl Lozza’s work Invention no. 150, which connects Concretism, Neo-Concretism, and Conceptual art movements.

Art historian Anna Pravdová delves deep into the MoMA Archives to highlight the Museum’s first exhibition of Czech art.

ator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work—the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity—following episodes in his life, writings, and works.

Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work–the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity–following episodes in his life, writings, and works. This is the second part of three. Torres’s first…

Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas considers the roots of the classicizing and modernist impulses in the work of Joaquín Torres-García. The essay examines a driving paradox of the artist’s work–the will to be modern while working against the grain of modernity–following episodes in his life, writings, and works. This is the first of three parts. In the…

Mário Pedrosa is widely considered Brazil’s preeminent critic of art, culture, and politics and is one of Latin America’s most frequently cited public intellectuals. Three selections from his writings included here (“The Vital Need for Art”; “Environmental Art, Postmodern Art, Hélio Oiticica”; “The New MAM Will Consist of Five Museums”) come from the anthology Mário Pedrosa:…

Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães discusses the disillusionment that led Modernist painter Joaquín Torres-García to leave New York as well as the city’s lasting influence on his artmaking and his continued ties to North America in this biographical essay. Second part of two. Despite these exhibitions, his circle of prosperous friends, and his significant connections to artists and…

In this essay, Jennifer Tobias, Reader Services Librarian, MoMA Library looks at the history of MoMA through the direct engagement of the artist. This research was presented in her exhibition Messing With MoMA: Critical Interventions at the Museum of Modern Art, 1939–Now (July 1–November 29, 2015), which documented seven decades of interventions by artists, the general public,…

Ram Rahman (photographer, designer, curator and activist) discusses key examples of modernist architecture in post-colonial India. Using photographic documentation and archival materials, he surveys the landscape of architects, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals working (primarily in New Delhi) between the 1950s and 1990s. This presentation is excerpted from a closed-door session with MoMA’s C-MAP Asia…

Jorge Schwartz discusses the prominence of the urban in Joaquín Torres-García’s visual and literary works. A major retrospective at MoMA, The Arcadian Modern, reveals a totalizing and structural vision of Joaquín Torres-García’s thinking, mainly through his painting, sculpture, objects, and, of particular interest to me, bibliographic production: his theoretical texts about Constructivism, autobiographical texts, manifestos,…

While going through MoMA’s Czech holdings during my Fulbright Research Fellowship at the Museum, I came across a surprising finding: the first Czech objects ever acquired by MoMA were a glass tumbler and two bowls designed by a young student, Věra Lišková (1924–1979) circa 1947, when Czechoslovakia was still part of the industrialized Western world.…