The rich cultural heritage of the Latin American continent has long fascinated European audiences. This fascination also extends to 20th-century Latin American art and literature, which tend to be perceived as largely dominated by Magic Realism (e.g. Gabriel García Márquez). The thematic focus of this exhibition seeks to counter this widely held misconception and to shed new light on the dynamic development of 20th-century abstract art in Latin America and its relationship to European classical Modernism. At the centre of the exhibition is the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, which caused a sensation when it first opened in the US and which now makes its first appearance in Germany.

A selection of more than two hundred works, spanning painting, sculpture, photography and drawing, presents key positions of Latin American geometric abstraction. The artists who propelled this broad movement broke with the narrative traditions of the indigenous Pre-Columbian civilisations. Embracing European and North American developments in abstract art, they expressed their novel perception of reality through structure, colour, form and rhythm alone. Intensely urban, Latin American geometric abstraction evolved in a fruitful dialogue with international art movements, ranging from Concrete Art of the 1930s and 40s to Op Art and kinetic art of the 1960s and 70s.

The thematically arranged exhibition traces the key trends of geometric abstraction and presents the most vibrant centres of the style in Latin America – most of them in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. Surprising visual links between artists of different generations and between different disciplines and styles provide new insights into one of the little-known and underappreciated chapters of international Modernism written by artists such as Joaquín Torres-García, Lygia Clark, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Hélio Oiticica, Hércules Barsotti, Carmen Herrera, Alejandro Otero, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Rafael Soto.

European artists who had fled Nazi Germany for Latin America also played an important role in this vibrant cultural exchange across the continents. Many found it hard to put down new roots, and most were forgotten in their countries of origin. The exhibition showcases representative groups of works by three Jewish émigré artists – the photographer Grete Stern, the sculptor Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) and the painter Mira Schendel – who defied adversity to build successful careers in their new home. This exhibition pays long overdue tribute to their life’s work.

Exhibition curator: Juan Ledezma
Assistant curator: Rainald Schumacher
Exhibition management: Agnieszka Lulinska