New Classicism in Collage: Negret, Nevelson and Ramírez Villamizar.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, artists around the world redefined the concept of abstraction seeking to explore new possibilities in painting and sculpture. A paradigmatic manifestation of this broader shift was advanced by a transnational group of artists based in New York who shared a preference for lucid, clear design, hard-edged geometrical shapes, and a restricted color palette often limited to flat primary colors and monochromes. At the time, their approach to abstraction was labeled “New Classicism.” Three international artists stand out amid this group as key figures in the redefinition of sculptural values in postwar geometric abstraction: the Russian-born Louise Nevelson and the Colombians Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar. These artists developed parallel sculptural practices based on the assemblage of metal sheets or wooden parts, building on their experimentation with collage.
The exhibition New Classicism in Collage: Negret, Nevelson, and Ramírez Villamizar brings these artists together for the first time in fifty years, highlighting their ventures into collage—an overlooked aspect of their work that reveals the hidden depths of their creative minds. The comparative approach presented in this show unveils the diverse nature of abstraction after the Second World War, as well as its transnational character, revealing the extent to which figures such as Negret, Nevelson and Ramírez Villamizar contributed to the vitality of postwar abstraction.
Curator: Ana M. Franco