Leon Tovar Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Tsunami, a highly anticipated art exhibit showcasing some of the most important Latin American art movements of the 20th century. The exhibit will be held at the gallery's location in the Upper East Side as of Thursday, March 9th, 2023.
Tsunami is a tribute to the wave of modern Latin American art that swept over the world, bringing with it a fresh and unique perspective on abstract expressionism, constructivism, geometric abstraction, and kinetic art. The exhibit will feature both painting and sculpture and will encompass the Argentine Madi Art and Concrete Art movements, Brazilian Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction, Kinetic Art and more organic abstract works that emanated from the region during the mid to second half of the 20th century.
The immersive exhibit is an ode to the pioneering art movements that emerged from Latin America, but also a celebration of their long-lasting impact on the global art scene. Included in the exhibit are some of the most notable Latin American artists of the 20th century such as: Joaquin Torres García, Luiz Sacilotto, Carmelo Arden-Quin, Martin Blaszko, as well as Jesús Rafael Soto, Gonzalo Fonseca, Marcelo Bonevardi, and many others.
Common among the revolutionary artists was their talent to constantly challenge engrained conventions of painting and sculpture and to commit to creating a space to explore and discover new possibilities and potential. From Joaquín Torres-García’s search for a specific Latin American form of modernity and his overall influence on Latin American contemporary practice, to the pluralistic materials found in Carmelo Arden- Quin’s works, to Luiz Sacilotto’s dynamic rhythms, perspective and color grading. These were artists who were not merely contributing to existing European and English speaking North American movements– as was commonly connotated at the time– but artists who transformed the current, and intentionally worked to push against it.
Featured in the exhibit are also Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt), Maria Freire, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, and Fanny Sanin four artists who, alongside their contemporaries, were radically reimagining the limits of traditional art at a time when women were not often deemed leaders, let alone, in the art world. The purely abstract, central investigation between objects and architectural space that occupied Gego, the hallmark shapes against planar backgrounds that would define Freire’s autonomy as an artist and individual in her artistic marriage, the fascination and study of Afro-Colombian heritage and multiculturalism that would infuse Hoyos’s works, and the simultaneous attention to both the surface of Sanin’s paintings and the unfolding of virtual space within them. These artists worked for decades challenging aesthetic norms and working to alter the movements of their time. The artists participated in countless group shows and solo retrospectives throughout their lifetimes, before earning the international critical acclaim due, and that they have since, rightfully, received.
From the vibrant colors and intricate lines of Madi art to the clean, geometric shapes of Brazilian constructivism: Tsunami brings together these myriad artists and movements, and explosively displays their works along the gallery walls, prompting the question: what phase of the aftermath do we currently find ourselves in? The exhibit aims to suggest we are in the reconstruction phase, where space is humbly created for overlooked transformational talents, honoring the artists’ legacies and commitment to preserving space in order to explore and discover new possibilities and potential.
Leon Tovar Gallery has curated an immersive experience, with each work carefully selected to showcase the full range and depth of the featured art movements. The gallery prides itself in presenting pioneering artists and works that have transcended time, and will continue doing so.
