The Blanton Museum of Art announces major donation of modern and contemporary Latin American art

The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin has received as donation from ex alumni of the University of Texas Judy and Charles Tate, Houston, approximately 120 works of modern and contemporary Latin American art.

Moreover, the Tate has made a significant contribution to the endowment fund that finances the curator of Latin American works from the museum. The collection of the Tate - all of which eventually will belong to Blanton - includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and mixed media works by artists Tarsila do Amaral, Lygia Clark, Frida Kahlo, Carlos Merida, Wifredo Lam, Armando Reveron, Diego Rivera, Alejandro Xul Solar and Joaquín Torres-García, among others. Covering a period that extends from the early twentieth century to the present, the donation includes works by many of the artists who were very important in the creation of modernism in Latin America.

The donation to the endowment fund adds to past contributions of the Tate to the Latin American art program of  Blanton and reaffirms its commitment to the development of endowment funds as institutional priority. The total value of the donation to Blanton is US $ 10 million.

For over fifteen years, Tate have formed a collection that complements that currently owns the museum, more than 2,100 Latin American objects. Among the most important: an ethereal painting by Armando Reveron in the 1920s; a pencil drawing  by Frida Kahlo in  1946 and a drawing by Diego Rivera from the cubist period; two paintings and a drawing in ink by Wifredo Lam made during his years in France from the late 1930s until his return to Cuba in 1940; a surreal painting by Leonora Carrington in 1951;  a glass mosaic by Carlos Mérida in 1953 - a playful fusion of abstraction and figuration; Kinetic and concrete works of art of the mid-twentieth century by major artists Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Lygia Clark, Willys de Castro, Lothar Charoux, Mira Schendel and Hélio Oiticica; and contemporary works of Fernando Botero, Waltercio Caldas, Jorge Macchi, Sebastián Gordin and Tunga.

Until February 15, 2015, the Blanton will present a selection of about 70 works from the collection. Entitled La línea continua, the exhibition takes its name from an elegant sculpture of the collection of Enio Iommi: a "line" made of stainless steel that traces an infinite loop in space. The work is also an apt metaphor for the continuous and enriching connection between Judy and Charles Tate, the University of Texas and the Blanton Museum of Art.

In autumn 2014 an illustrated catalog of the donation Tate, with a foreword by the President of the University of Texas, William Powers will be published; a dialogue between the Director of Blanton, Simone Wicha, Judy and Charles Tate and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director Patricia Cisneros Collection; an essay by the curator of Latin American Art section of Blanton, Beverly Adams, and short articles of graduate students in Art and Art History at the University of Texas.

The University of Texas at Austin
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Congress Avenue
200 East MLK, D1303, Austin TX 78712
512-475-6784 P / F 512-471-7023
www.blantonmuseum.org
 

Source: artealdía