Loló Soldevilla, Gego, María Freire, Mira Schendel, Regina Aprijaskis, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Zilia Sánchez, Mercedes Pardo, Lia Bermúdez, Fanny Sanín, Lydia Okumura.
29/6 – 14/9 2019
Curator | Adriana Herrera
Atchugarry Art Center | Miami | Florida
The exhibition brings together twelve pioneering figures whose practices redefined the possibilities of geometric abstraction across Latin America and beyond. Rather than presenting geometry as a closed historical chapter, the project repositions it as a living, contested field shaped by artists who expanded its intellectual and sensorial dimensions.
Though their trajectories differ widely in geography, medium and temperament, they share a refusal to treat geometry as mere formal discipline. For each of them, structure becomes a vehicle for questioning perception, space, language and the body.
The historical framing is significant. Many of these artists began working in the 1950s and 1960s, at a moment when geometric abstraction was often associated with universalism and rational order. Yet their contributions complicate that narrative. In Gego’s reticulated structures, the grid dissolves into fragile networks that deny rigidity. In Lygia Clark’s participatory propositions, geometry becomes tactile and relational. Mira Schendel’s investigations of transparency and script destabilize the boundary between language and form. What emerges is not a homogeneous movement, but a field of tensions.
The exhibition resists a purely chronological reading. Instead, it foregrounds affinities and frictions: the chromatic precision of Fanny Sanín resonates differently when placed near the sensuous reliefs of Zilia Sánchez; the spatial inquiries of Lydia Okumura open another dimension when considered alongside the sculptural investigations of Lia Bermúdez. Across painting, drawing, sculpture and conceptual experimentation, geometry appears elastic — capable of containing both analytical rigor and poetic instability.
Importantly, the curatorial premise does not reduce these artists to a shared gender identity, nor does it instrumentalize their Latin American context as a single narrative. Rather, it acknowledges how historical structures delayed or complicated recognition, while emphasizing the singularity of each practice. The exhibition thus operates on two levels: it revises art-historical memory and simultaneously insists on individual voices.
What ultimately becomes clear is that these artists did not merely contribute to geometric abstraction; they transformed it. They extended its conceptual reach toward philosophy, mathematics, corporeality and even erotic sensitivity. Geometry, in their hands, is neither neutral nor detached. It is a space of negotiation — between system and freedom, discipline and intuition, order and lived experience
By bringing these twelve figures into sustained dialogue, the exhibition reveals a history that is less linear and more porous than previously acknowledged. It proposes that abstraction’s evolution cannot be understood without considering these practices, which quietly but decisively expanded the language of form.