Synopses & Reviews
This stunning book accompanies the first full-scale survey of the dynamic work of Swiss-born Brazilian artist Mira Schendel (1919and#150;1988). Alongside her contemporaries Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, Schendel reinvented the language of European modernism in Brazil. Her work is characterized by a variation in materials, from braided, twisted rice paper to acrylic paintand#173;ings to black-and-white temperas and a series of paintings using brick dust. During the height of her artistic powers, her work often focused on the visual component of languageand#151;using letters, words, and phonetic combinations to highlight the gestural and and#147;sudden semantic valueand#8221; of the writand#173;ten word. After her death in 1988 her work was shown extensively around the world, culminating in a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2009.
Synopsis
Leon Ferrari (born in 1920) and Mira Schendel (1919-1988) are among the most significant Latin American artists of the twentieth century. Active simultaneously in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in the neighboring countries of Argentina and Brazil, they found inspiration in the written word and in the eloquence of spoken language, and they both used language as important visual subject matter. Published to accompany the first comprehensive survey of the work of each artist in the United States, this essential catalogue presents new insights into the artists' groundbreaking work and examines the connections and collisions between the visual arts, writing, politics and religion in their oeuvres.
Synopsis
Edited by Luis Perez-Oramas. Text by Luis Perez-Oramas, Andrea Giunta, Rodrigo Naves.
About the Author
Tanya Barson is curator (international art) at Tate Modern.