Artlog

Leon Ferrari (Argentine, b. 1920) and Mira Schendel (Brazilian, b. Switzerland, 1919 – 1988) are considered among the most significant artists working in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition, the first major retrospective of these artists ever held in the United States, presents approximately 160 works, including drawings, sculptures, and paintings, which span from the early 1960s to the 1990s. Their works address language as a major visual subject matter: the visual body of language, the embodiment of voices as words and gestures, and as a metaphor of the worldly aspect of human existence through the eloquence of naming and writing. They produced their works in the neighboring countries of Argentina and Brazil between 1960 and 1990 when the question of language was particularly central to the Western Culture through the central role taken by post-structuralism, semiotics, and the philosophy of language in the social sciences and public discussions. Their drawings, sculptures, multiples, and paintings are contemporary to the birth of Conceptualism, but are distinctively different and have not yet been exhibited in their entirety in America.