Booth 405
Leon Tovar Gallery is pleased to announce its presentation at TEFAF Maastricht, 2022. As one of the foremost galleries in the field of Modern Latin American art, the Gallery has selected a survey of mid-twentieth century abstract practices that includes artists working in concrete, geometric, constructivist and optical languages; as such, the gallery will display pieces by representatives of the Argentinian Madi group, the Venezuelans Jesús Rafael Soto, Joaquín Torres- Garcia, Marcelo Bonevardi, Omar Rayo, amongst others.
The artists in the gallery’s presentation together capture mid-twentieth-century Modernism through a wide lens, a panoramic approach that elucidates through lines among some of Latin America’s foremost artists. The aesthetic philosophy promoted by renowned educator and theorist Joaquín Torres-García emerges in the work of Marcelo Bonevardi, whose enigmatic constructions question our relation to history and knowledge, as well as Carmelo Arden Quin, the MADI firebrand who was tremendously influenced by Torres-García’s transformable toys.
In compositions both playful and precise, Omar Rayo’s black-and-white ribbons spiral away into space, even as there remains within his paintings an overall impression of astonishing flatness. At times, Rayo’s precise forms appear less as representations of curling, overlapping bands, than as pieces of cut canvas folded into a three-dimensional, delicate origami. This is where the enchantment of Omar Rayo’s work resides.
Seeking a very different mode of abstraction are the artists Jesús Rafael Soto, and Luis Tomasello, who both deployed visual ambiguity towards different ends. Soto’s experiments with vibrations produced by the simple sequencing of black and white parallel lines prioritize the present moment of perception, but in doing so powerfully illustrate the constantly shifting nature of our universe and of matter itself. The shimmering reflections on tomasello’s Reflexión No. 15 reveal the artist’s desire to transgress the traditional limits of the art object, and to empower spectators who are now the choreographers of their own aesthetic experience.
Taken together, these pieces highlight the diversity of Latin American abstraction during the mid-twentieth century, while providing opportunities to expand into the larger discourse of Modernism.
