Abstraction: The American-Indian Paradigm

The exhibition sets out to show the degree of intervention and influence of the aesthetics of native Indians in American art from the late sixties onwards through a selection of works belonging to North American and Hispano-American artists who practised geometrical abstraction. This show explores the spiritual relationship between abstract art and ancient primitive art. In 1937, three years after his return to Uruguay, Torres-García launched a programme of vindication and validation of what he defined as the Constructive Tradition of America, which began with the ancient geometrical abstraction that has come down to us through the architecture, textiles, jewels, gold and silver objects and pottery of pre-Columbian civilisations. In North America, from the mid-thirties to the late forties, various artists examined the indigenous cultures of the American continent in search of an inspiration different from what they found in cultures that came from Europe or in academic and corporate artistic sources. This is the case with Adolph Gottlieb, who travelled to Arizona and was captivated by the pottery of the Indians, with Josef Albers, who visited Mexico various times and admired the architecture and art of the Mayas, or Louise Nevelson, who was an assistant to Diego Rivera and whose studies included the ancient architecture of Mexico and Guatemala. The exhibition examines the way in which these and other artists related to the heritage of the aboriginal American cultures, and also the abstract art that emerged from this hybrid fertilisation through the structural principles provided by indigenous handicrafts: the presence of old weavings and carpets as models of conceptualised space, or the tectonic concept derived from the constructions of stonework and clay which are characteristic of these ancestral cultures.