At Frieze Masters 2021 Dickinson will present Perspective of the Imagination: Women Artists of Latin America, a curated stand featuring paintings, sculpture and works on paper by leading names in Latin American 20th Century Modernism. The show will feature highlights by Lygia Clark, Carmen Herrera, Mira Schendel, María Freire, Fanny Sanín and some half dozen others, and will demonstrate that – far from remaining on the margins of the avant-garde – female artists were often unacknowledged pioneers in some of the most iconic movements of the period, and played a central role in global artistic innovation. Whether through international travel or international travelling exhibitions, these artists sought exposure to contemporary European movements, deliberately integrating them with uniquely Latin American elements in a manner that has been enduringly influential.
A major highlight of Dickinson’s stand will be a group of early works by Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, all from a private collection. Having arrived in Paris shortly after the end of WWII, Herrera immersed herself in the work of Post-War geometric abstractionists and Bauhaus artists, developing her own form of abstraction.
Known as a founding member of Brazil’s Grupo Frente, Lygia Clark moved to Paris for two years in 1950 before returning home to Rio de Janeiro. Clark’s innovations helped to usher in the Neo-Concrete movement, a splinter group of Brazilian Concrete Art, which brought more sensuous colour and greater poetry.
By reimagining the visual vocabulary of European Modernism in a Latin American context, Zürich-born Brazilian Mira Schendel was able to explore philosophical themes of language, chaos and the relationship between space and time. Four of her abstract paintings from the 1960s, Untitled (c. 1960) and Sem título (c. 1965) are among Dickinson’s highlights.
‘I abandoned figuration for the perspective of the imagination, anxious to create a new space.’ María Freire
María Freire was a painter, sculptor and critic who became a leading figure in the development of Concrete and non-figurative art in her native Uruguay. Much like the Cubists in Western Europe, Freire was drawn to the stylised features and flat forms of African masks, also finding inspiration in Pre-Columbian art.
Born in Bogotá, Fanny Sanín is considered a preeminent master among the Colombian abstractionists. An early period of study in England introduced Sanín to the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Barnet Newman, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella, among others; several of the works exhibited by Dickinson at Frieze were painted during these pivotal London years.
Dickinson has long promoted and exhibited Modern and Contemporary Latin American art in shows such as Playing with Form: Neoconcrete art from Brazil (2011) and Ivan Serpa: Pioneering Abstraction in Brazil (2012). The gallery is delighted to continue this tradition with Perspective of the Imagination, highlighting an area of the market that is still undervalued. Dickinson’s stand will once again be designed in collaboration with Axel Clissen of Socle Studio.