Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018 – Monday, Jan. 21, 2019

► Información en español sobre la exposición

Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975charts the trajectory of the Venezuelan Informalist movement from the mid-1950s through its last manifestations in the 1970s. More than 100 works of art across a variety of media—collage, painting, assemblage, photography—showcase the richness and complexity of the underrepresented movement.

Informalism embraced many of the abstract gestural tendencies that developed in Venezuela at the same time as North America’s Abstract Expressionism and Europe’s Tachisme and Art Informel. This exhibition brings together works of art from the collection of Mercantil Arte y Cultura in Caracas as well as from other public and private collections in Venezuela and the United States.

Organized into five sections, Contesting Modernity presents works by internationally renowned figures such as Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gego, Alejandro Otero, and Jesús Rafael Soto. Many practitioners of the movement are represented, including Alberto Brandt, Elsa Gramcko, Fernando Irazábal, Francisco Hung, Mercedes Pardo, and Maruja Rolando to name a few.

Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975 | October 28, 2018–January 21, 2019

Publication
The illustrated exhibition catalogue is available through the MFA Shop (713.639.7360) and the Museum’s Hirsch Library (713.639.7325).