Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents the Brillembourg Capriles Collection of Latin American Art

The exhibition features some 100 works from the private collection of Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg, who assembled what is considered one of the finest private holdings of 20th-century Latin American art. Intersecting Modernities: Latin American Art from the Brillembourg Capriles Collection will be on display at the MFAH until September 2, 2013.

"The Brillembourg Capriles Collection conveys the breath and richness of artistic expression among Latin American masters across the 20th century. Many of the artists represented are rarely seen in the United States, and this is an extraordinary opportunity to see many masterpieces in one exhibition," noted Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

"The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curators and conservators have been working in active partnership with Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg over several years to present the exhibition in Houston," said Mari Carmen Ramírez, the MFAH Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). "The conservation and research effort, led first by Wynn Phelan and Andrea di Bagno, and more recently by paintings conservator Zahira Véliz Bomford, has produced new knowledge and insight into many of the artists’ use of innovative materials and techniques."

The Brillembourg Capriles Collection is distinguished by groupings of important artists from Central and South America. The presentation features luminaries such as Diego Rivera, Fernando Botero, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta and Joaquín Torres-García, all represented by works made at the height of their respective careers that provide insight into each artist’s formal and stylistic innovation. The collection also contains strong holdings of works by Emilio Pettoruti, Armando Reverón, Rufino Tamayo, Antonio Seguí, Armando Morales, Loló de Soldevila and Elias Crespin.

Intersecting Modernities brings together artists who were influential in avant-garde movements in Europe, Latin America and the United States and whose contributions to art bridge aspects of Modernism from both sides of the Atlantic. Diego Rivera’s Naturaleza muerta con limones (Still Life with Lemons) (1916), a key work of the exhibition, is emblematic of these cross-cultural dynamics. The painting highlights the artist’s deep engagement with Cubism before he turned to muralism; it represents one of his most daring experimentations with color, which he uses to heighten perceptions of space and to suggest the fourth dimension.

The exhibition offers an unprecedented view of works by Wifredo Lam and by Matta, two artists who worked in parallel at mid-century, developing their own modes of Surrealism and occasionally exhibiting together. Seventeen works in the exhibition by Lam span the years of the artist’s first arrival in France in 1938, where he befriended Picasso, his subsequent homecoming to Cuba in 1941 and his travels between Havana, Paris and New York in the 1950s. Together these paintings and works on paper survey the so-called "decisive years" of Lam’s production, when he experimented and consolidated his style, blending lessons learned from the French avant-garde with his interest in African and Afro-Cuban cultural themes. Eight works by Matta illustrate a pivotal early period in his trajectory, when the Chilean artist lived in exile in New York (1939–48), through the early 1950s. They address the major issues of modern society, many on a monumental scale: war, human freedom, sexual strife and the impact of technology.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Fernando Botero, another important pictorial innovator from Colombia, used a Pop-inspired visual language to paint commentaries on current events and satirize political figures in Latin America. His inflated characters and objects (now recognized as his signature style) are only one layer of very radical paintings, which show the precision of a trained engraver, and a delicate balance of compositional elements and color.

These are but a few of the highlights of “Intersecting Modernities”, which focuses on artists whose work engaged in transnational dialogues between Latin America and elsewhere. Whether engaged with aspects of Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Pop Art and other movements, the works featured in this exhibition offer new ground for understanding international avant-garde movements of the 20th century and the global contributions made by Latin America’s artists.

The Brillembourg Capriles Collection—alongside the Fundación Gego in Caracas and the Cruz-Diez Foundation in Paris—contributes to the “Partners in Art” program, which was established by the MFAH Latin American Art Department to bring long-term loans to the MFAH for use in exhibitions, research and publications.

On the topic of sharing her collection with others, Mrs. Brillembourg, a renowned Venezuelan Philanthropist, remarked: "Art should be where people can see it, contemplate it and identify with it. To have art in my home just so that people can come and say that I have good taste? That is not my style. Never!"

Conservation and Research Efforts

The Brillembourg Capriles Collection has offered a unique opportunity for curators, conservators and collectors to uncover the experimental techniques and individual painting processes each artist employed resulting in new scholarship and historical reappraisals.

Across the collection, conservators investigated the unconventional ways that Latin American artist’s employed their materials to achieve specific effects. For instance, examinations of Figura bajo un uvero (Woman under a Sea-Grape Tree) (1920), an early masterwork by the Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón, revealed that the artist used rags to thickly apply the paint. In these areas, paint delicately projects off the surface of the work, bestowing a sense of tactility to this depiction of the light and coast of the Caribbean—it is a technique that conservators revealed could not be achieved by using traditional brushes. Works by Nicaraguan artist Armando Morales show experimentation of a different kind. By alternating between applying layers of oil paint and carefully sanding down the picture plane, Morales created works with unconventional, glossy surfaces. Yet, beyond their surface sheen, they reveal a deeply woven texture of paint beneath their surface. Conservators worked to protect early experiments with this technique, known to be extremely fragile, and found that later works in the Brillembourg collection reveal how he perfected his method, building ever-more stable surfaces and monumental paintings.

On the topic of sharing her collection with others, Mrs. Brillembourg, a renowned Venezuelan Philanthropist, remarked: "Art should be where people can see it, contemplate it and identify with it. To have art in my home just so that people can come and say that I have good taste? That is not my style. Never!"

Mrs. Brillembourg is dedicated to supporting the arts and children’s healthcare initiatives. In 2003, she founded the SaludArte Foundation, a growing nonprofit organization in America and Spain that offers medical assistance to families with financial needs and brings art programs, social integration and educational activities to hospitals, schools and correctional facilities.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring 19 essays, biographies of the artists represented, 180 color illustrations and an interview with the collector, Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg, by Mari Carmen Ramírez. The catalogue has been researched and written by a team of writers and contributors associated with the International Center for the Arts of the Americas and is an example of how exhibition projects can serve as catalysts for the production of new knowledge.