Mrinalini Mukherjee’s work does not easily fit any neat categories, whether “Post-Minimalism,” “Fiber art” or “craft.” Considering Yakshi (1984) in MoMA’s reinstalled galleries, the essay highlights the influence of her cultural background on her methods and materials.
The sculptures of Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948-2015) offer a vision of a future modernity that is beautiful, harmonious, and functional.
The names, cultures, and nationalities of African artists who influenced Picasso have historically been omitted from scholarship. Yet Picasso’s interest in African masks is well-known. In this essay, MoMA staff member Kunbi Oni charts the implications— and possibilities—that closer attention to the makers of such masks could shed on modern art.
Through Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso to ancient Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, scholar Luis Pérez-Oramas outlines and contextualizes Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s vast body of work. The third and final section of this essay connects the sculptural nature of Clark’s paintings and the human body’s activation in her later works.
Through Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso to ancient Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, scholar Luis Pérez-Oramas outlines and contextualizes Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s vast body of work. Part two of this essay positions Clark’s paintings as architectural explorations and living organisms.
Through Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso to ancient Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, scholar Luis Pérez-Oramas outlines and contextualizes Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s vast body of work. Part one of this essay examines Clark’s early works as form-based and the underlying performative aspects of their construction.
If the Caribbean has largely been subtracted from those better-known narratives of art and artists that dominate the Atlantic world, attempts to mend this failing have often brought about mixed results. How may we come to appreciate that Caribbean experience is integral to the historical development and understanding of modern and contemporary art?
Going beyond the context of modern Brazil and its experimental art scene, this essay traces a wide genealogy for his body of work, from local traditions such as samba to European intellectual figures such as Friedrich Nietzsche.
Gego (1912–1994, Gertrud Goldschmidt), arguably the most influential Venezuelan artist of the twentieth century, was the critical counter-figure of Venezuelan Kineticism.
Samantha Friedman comments on the importance of the work in the development of Brazilian modern art.
Twenty images of artworks and related materials by the Slovene group OHO from the MoMA Archives have been digitized and made accessible here.
In 2016, The Museum of Modern Art received a major gift from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, which added more than 100 works of modern art by major artists from Latin America to the Museum’s collection and established the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America.
