Marina Apollonio. Spazi ad attivazione cinetica, 1967-1971/2007. Vinyl. The original: steel, wood, PVC. 16 ft. diameter. Original: 10 meters diameter. Courtesy of the artist.
In 1965, the Museum of Modern Art presented The Responsive Eye, the first major Op art exhibition, which later toured across the United States. The show was enormously popular, much to the chagrin of art critics which dismissed the visual effects as nothing more than tricks to fool the eye. But the American public was charmed by the immediate gratification and understanding that it brought, and Op art quickly became a fine art and commercial mainstay across both continents.
In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of that historic show, El Museo del Barrio, New York presents The Illusive Eye on view now through May 21, 2016. The exhibition pays homage to the exploratory vision and of MoMA’s curator William Seitz, whose important work helped to develop the interest around this singular form of artistic production in the 1960s by pushing beyond the MoMA’s own standard views of geometric abstraction.
Mario Carreño. Untitled, 1954. Oil on canvas. 31 x 41 inches. Collection OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas.
These modes of aesthetic exploration were also already highly developed forms practiced in Latin America in the 1960s, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela. Yet, the 1965 exhibition represented 99 artists, 91 of whom were from Europe or North America; only six of the 99 were born in Latin America; the show featured 123 works of art—seven by Latin Americans.
The Illusive Eye sets out to correct this imbalance. Curated by Jorge Daniel Veneciano, Ph.D., Executive Director, El Museo del Barrio, The Illusive Eye embraces, expands, and redefines the style by providing a Latin American perspective on the variations of optical art, geometric abstraction, and kinetic art.
Josef Albers. Structural Constellation: F.M.E. 5, 1962. Machine- engraved plastic laminate mounted on wood. 19 1/2 x 26 in. Framed 20 1/4 x 26 1/8 x 1 1/4 in. © 2015 Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / ARSNY In.
The exhibition features monumental luminescent works by Julio LeParc and arresting pattern paintings by artists Horacio Garcia Rossi, and Luis Tomasello. From additional private collections, the exhibition will present prominent works by Venezuelans Alejandro Otero, Carlos Cruz Diez, and Jesús Rafael Soto and the Cuban artists Mario Carreño, Sandú Darié and LoloSoldevilla.
Women artists will feature prominently in the exhibition, including Gego (Gertrudis Goldschmidt, Venezuela), Zilia Sanchez (Cuba/Puerto Rico), Carmen Herrera (Cuba), Lygia Clark (Brazil), Lygia Pape (Brazil), Matilde Perez (Chile), Martha Boto (Argentina), Ana Sacerdote (Argentina), Antonieta Sosa (US/Venezuela) and María Freire (Uruguay). Among the international artists to be featured are Josef Albers, Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely.
Fanny Sanin. Acrylic No. 7, 1978. Acrylic on canvas. 56 x 68 in. Courtesy of the artist and Henriqu Faria, New York.
Dr. Veneciano observes, “The Illusive Eye is about illusions—those we see and feel when we look at Op and kinetic art and those experienced by the curators and art historians of these movements. The perceptual play of things seen and unseen provides us with a model for understanding the relative invisibility of Latin American artists in past surveys of Op art.”
By positioning Latin American artists within the history of Op Art, The Illusive Eye reminds us, that we must always look beyond the surface, for what is there is only but part of the truth. It is by virtue of retrospect that we of the present can evaluate the records of the past, and write history to the fullest extents of our knowledge.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
