Latin American Concrete and Neoconcrete Art Survey at Moderna Museet Reveals Global Networks

Moderna Museet in Stockholm presents 'Concrete Matters,' an exhibition featuring over 80 works of Latin American Concrete and Neoconcrete art from 1934 to 1976, drawn from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros collection. The show challenges the Paris–New York axis of modernism by highlighting diverse trajectories, including Uruguayan Joaquín Torres-García's fusion of concrete and pre-Columbian traditions in small oil paintings. It showcases Swedish Concrete art by Otto G. Carlsund and Olle Baertling, emphasizing global influences, and includes Jesús Rafael Soto's kinetic works from the museum's collection, stemming from his participation in Pontus Hultén's 1961 show 'Art in Motion.' The exhibition explores the movement's diversification through cultural exchanges, such as Gego's steel and copper drawings reflecting her escape from Nazi Germany to Venezuela. Neoconcrete works by Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape from Rio de Janeiro's 1959 movement incorporate body and participation, blending Concrete art with phenomenology and Brazilian culture. Clark's rubber sculptures and Oiticica's cloaks are displayed, with connections to exile and international scenes like Oiticica's 1969 'Tropicália' at Whitechapel Gallery. The show runs from 24 February to 13 May 2018, originally reviewed in ArtReview's May 2018 issue, and underscores how these works innovatively escape the rigid demands of early manifestos like the 1946 Manifiesto invencionista.