cover image Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century

Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century

. ABRAMS, $65 (424pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-6121-0

As this exhilarating survey reveals, Latin American artists assimilated cubism, surrealism, expressionism and other currents, creating wholly new forms that juggled a modern internationalist sensibility with a concern for individual and national identity. Documenting a recent exhibition at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, 14 scholars and critics discuss the biting political and social pictures of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, Colombian satirist Fernando Botero's inflated prelates and prostitutes, Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral's poetic reordering of industrialized urban reality, the Uruguayan Joaquin Torres-Garcia's metaphysical synthesis of European modernism and pre-Columbian images, and 90 other artists. Pop and conceptual art, assemblage, neofiguration, and kinetic and optical abstraction all take new directions here in works of passion, imagination and political consciousness. Rasmussen is director of MOMA's International Program. (Nov.)