Jesus Rafael Soto was born in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela in 1923 but developed his career in Paris where he became a pioneer of the Kinetic Art movement. He worked the mediums of painting, relief and installation although not in a conventional manner, which allowed him to represent vibration, movement, light, space and time. His extensive body of work consists of repetitions and variations of abstract systems more recognisable through the series of fine metallic constructions and glued elements on monochromatic striped backgrounds entitled Vibraciones and the iconic structures with fine and curved wires entitled Escrituras produced since 1959 and 1963 respectively. Soto was part of the group of Venezuelan and Argentine artists who settled in Paris in the 1950´s and were at the forefront of the kinetic movement through their association with the Denise Rene gallery, which began their support with the 1950 exhibition Le Mouvement. His work has been acquired by MoMa, MCNRS, Tate, Centre Georges Pompidou and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Soto died in Paris in 2005 aged 82.
Archives: Artists
A featured artist
Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo was born in 1899 in Oaxaca, México. He moved to New York in the early 1940´s where he lived for 20 years before relocating permanently to his home country. He worked in the medium of painting, drawing and printing and creating a distinctive and personal iconography by combining elements of the international avant garde along with features of Pre-Hispanic art. His signature style was established through a chromatic exploration conducted during a career span of seventy years, which led to the consolidation of a wide and bright colour scheme. Even though he initially painted still life and urban landscapes influenced by cubism, his work took on a lyric and symbolic dimension whilst exploring new subjects such as erotica. Tamayo did not adhere to the political radicalism commonly expressed by the work of contemporary Mexican painters of the time, though it did not prevent him completing eight murals with political and social content in the 1950´s, including El nacimiento de nuestra nacionalidad, México de hoy y Homenaje a la raza india. His work has been acquired by MOMA, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Tamayo died in 1991 in Ciudad de México at the age of 92.
Wilfredo Lam
Wilfredo Lam was born in Sagua La Grande, Cuba in 1902. He moved to Madrid in 1923 where he first came into contact with the European avant-garde and studied the paintings of the Great Masters. He then travelled to Paris in 1938 where his association with Picasso allowed him to explore African art as well as giving him access to Miró, Tanguy, Tzara, Breton and the complete circle of surrealists. Three years after he relocated permanently to his home country whilst fascism advanced rapidly in Europe and emerged in the Caribbean.
Helio Oiticica
Helio Oiticica was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937. He was a key figure of the Neo-Concrete movement in the 1960´s and an important member of Grupo Frente alongside Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape. He worked across multiple mediums such as painting, drawing, film, and installation, and is well known for the broad inter-disciplinary scope of his work. His early production places emphasis on two-dimensional geometric abstraction using mainly a monochromatic colour scheme featuring squares and rectangles against a colourless background. The series Metaesquema is clearly influenced by Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian although in these compositions he distorted the regular and rigorous structures of the Suprematism and De Stijl. Oiticica then moved to the production of viewer-oriented projects in the 1960´s, in which he is well recognised for his series of penetrables entitled Tropicália produced in 1967. These installations are formalized through his exploration of art as life itself. Interestingly, however, many of his three-dimensional works today are replicas reproduced by his Estate based on instructions left by the artist. His works have been acquired by the MoMa, Tate and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others. Oiticica died in Rio de Janeiro in 1980 at the age of 43.
Mira Schendel
Mira Schendel was born in Zurich in 1919. She emigrated to Brazil shortly after the end of the Second World War where she started her artistic career as a ceramist and painter. Initially she worked in the medium of clay, moving then to painting, drawing and sculpture in which she created a signature style of minimalist and gestural compositions. The turning point of Schendel´s career was 1964, when she started producing works on Japanese paper through which brought her international acclaim. Her images are sophisticated and delicate compositions, which make use of a silent language to evoke existential and metaphysical questions. The series Monotypes (1964–5) and Escritas (1965) make references to language and typography through the unsystematic use of signs and calligraphy on a colourless and translucent background. In these works the image is substituted by handwriting. Yet the iconic pieces of this period are a three-dimensional work made of knotted rice paper entitled Droguinhas, and a sculpture of accumulated papers hanging from a nylon thread entitled Trenzinho. In 2009, MoMa held an exhibition entitled Tangled Alphabets: León Ferrari and Mira Schendel, which has been the most comprehensive retrospective international display to date. Her work has been acquired by MoMa, Tate, MNCARS and Daros Latinamerica, among others. She died in São Paulo in 1988 at the age of 69.
Malick Sidibé
Sidibe was born in Soloba, and studied in Bamako. He is reknowened for his black and white photography of 1960s Bamako. His works explores ideas of colonialism and popular culture in Mali, and he is seen as a major figure in African photography. The height of his recognition came in 2007 when he was awarde the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the 52nd Venice Biennale, which was the first time the award was gien to a photographer. He was had many high profile internal exhibtions including solo shows at the Hasselblad Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Furthermore his work has been included in group shows held at Tate Modern, Internationla Center of Photography and Museo Guggenheim de Arte Moderno y Contemporaneo.
Owusu-Ankomah
Owusu-Ankomah was born in 1956 in Sekondi, but since 1986 has been a German resident. Owusu-Ankomah’s work explores themes of culture and identity via his usage of the Adinkra symbol system of the Akan people of Ghana, as well as Chinese ideograms and contemporary global cultures. He was shown extensively throughout Europe and has his work in the National Museum of African Art in Washington DC.
Gerard Sekoto
Sekoto (1913-1993) was born in Botshabelo in South Africa. Throughout his aristic career, Sekota live in two of the most infamous urban resettlements during the Apartheid era, namely Sophiatown and District Six. His work reflected his life during this time, infusing the harsh conditions with vivid hues and compositions. In 1947, he went into exile in Paris as a protest against the Apartheid government. For obvious reasons, as a black artist, his work was not revered in South Africa, but in 1940 his work was bought by the Johannesburg Art Gallery, making him the first black artist to have their work in a South African museum collection. At the end of apartheid in the late 80s and early 90s, Sekota’s work began to receive domestic recognition, which culminated in a retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Since the democratization of South Africa, Sekota has been hailed as the father of South African art.
Maggie Laubser
Laubser (1886 – 1973) was born on a farm outside Malmesbury in South Africa. She later studied in London at the Slade School of Art. Her work is often associated with that of Irma Stern due to her introduction of Expressionism to South Africa. Both artists were influenced by their time in Europe especially Germany, and in fact the two artists did travel together in Europe. As with Stern, her work was initially rejected by the South African art community but fortunately was later revered by them. Laubser was a prolific artist as her catalogue raisonne by Danele Marias contains 1784 individual works. Later in her career, Laubser was hailed as one of the great South Afrcian artists, and has retrospectives at the South African National Gallery and Pretoria Art Museum in 1969, and again in 1987. Her work is featured in the majority of major South African museum collections.
William Kentridge
Arguably the most famous South African artist, William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, and studied at the University of Witwatersrand. He originally worked as a theatre actor and director , but later became a full time artist. His work is known to be heavily contextualised by South African society. Despite this, his work was been presented throughout the world, including MOMA in 2007 and 2010, Garage Centre fro Contemporary Culture in Moscow, 2011, while he is one of the very few African artists to have gallery representation at a major international gallery, in this case Marion Goodman Gallery in New York. Despite his success, Kentridge continues to develop his creative output as most recently he has taken to directing opera.