Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents The Brillembourg Capriles Collection of Latin American Art, on Public Display for the First Time

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Distinguished collection of 20th-century Latin American art assembled over 40 years by Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg

More than 100 masterworks created by artists including Rivera, Lam and Matta at the height of their careers

Houston—June 2013—This summer, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will present the public debut of the exquisite Brillembourg Capriles Collection of Latin American Art, which has been on long-term loan to the museum for several years and has undergone extensive research by curators and conservators during that time. The exhibition features some 100 works from the private collection of Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg, who assembled what is considered one of the finest private holdings of 20th-century Latin American art. Intersecting Modernities: Latin American Art from The Brillembourg Capriles Collection will be on display at the MFAH June 20 through September 2, 2013.

"The Brillembourg Capriles Collection conveys the breadth and richness of artistic expression among Latin American masters across the 20th century. Many of the artists represented are rarely seen in the United States, and this is an extraordinary opportunity to see many masterpieces in one exhibition," noted Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

"The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curators and conservators have been working in active partnership with Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg over several years to present the exhibition in Houston," said Mari Carmen Ramírez, the MFAH Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). "The conservation and research effort, led first by Wynn Phelan and Andrea di Bagno, and more recently by paintings conservator Zahira Véliz Bomford, has produced new knowledge and insight into many of the artists’ use of innovative materials and techniques."

The Brillembourg Capriles Collection is distinguished by groupings of important artists from Central and South America. The presentation features luminaries such as Diego Rivera, Fernando Botero, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta and Joaquín Torres-García, all represented by works made at the height of their respective careers that provide insight into each artist’s formal and stylistic innovation. The collection also contains strong holdings of works by Emilio Pettoruti, Armando Reverón, Rufino Tamayo, Antonio Seguí, Armando Morales, Loló de Soldevila and Elias Crespin.

Intersecting Modernities brings together artists who were influential in avant-garde movements in Europe, Latin America and the United States and whose contributions to art bridge aspects of Modernism from both sides of the Atlantic. Diego Rivera’s Naturaleza muerta con limones (Still Life with Lemons) (1916), a key work of the exhibition, is emblematic of these cross-cultural dynamics. The painting highlights the artist’s deep engagement with Cubism before he turned to muralism; it represents one of his most daring experimentations with color, which he uses to heighten perceptions of space and to suggest the fourth dimension.

The exhibition offers an unprecedented view of works by Wifredo Lam and by Matta, two artists who worked in parallel at mid-century, developing their own modes of Surrealism and occasionally exhibiting together. Seventeen works in the exhibition by Lam span the years of the artist’s first arrival in France in 1938, where he befriended Picasso, his subsequent homecoming to Cuba in 1941 and his travels between Havana, Paris and New York in the 1950s. Together these paintings and works on paper survey the so-called "decisive years" of Lam’s production, when he experimented and consolidated his style, blending lessons learned from the French avant-garde with his interest in African and Afro-Cuban cultural themes.  Eight works by Matta illustrate a pivotal early period in his trajectory, when the Chilean artist lived in exile in New York (1939–48), through the early 1950s. They address the major issues of modern society, many on a monumental scale: war, human freedom, sexual strife and the impact of technology.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Fernando Botero, another important pictorial innovator from Colombia, used a Pop-inspired visual language to paint commentaries on current events and satirize political figures in Latin America. His inflated characters and objects (now recognized as his signature style) are only one layer of very radical paintings, which show the precision of a trained engraver, and a delicate balance of compositional elements and color.

These are but a few of the highlights of Intersecting Modernities, which focuses on artists whose work engaged in transnational dialogues between Latin America and elsewhere. Whether engaged with aspects of Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Pop Art and other movements, the works featured in this exhibition offer new ground for understanding international avant-garde movements of the 20th century and the global contributions made by Latin America’s artists.

The Brillembourg Capriles Collection—alongside the Fundación Gego in Caracas and the Cruz-Diez Foundation in Paris—contributes to the “Partners in Art” program, which was established by the MFAH Latin American Art Department to bring long-term loans to the MFAH for use in exhibitions, research and publications.

Conservation and Research Efforts
The Brillembourg Capriles Collection has offered a unique opportunity for curators, conservators and collectors to uncover the experimental techniques and individual painting processes each artist employed resulting in new scholarship and historical reappraisals.

Across the collection, conservators investigated the unconventional ways that Latin American artist’s employed their materials to achieve specific effects. For instance, examinations of Figura bajo un uvero (Woman under a Sea-Grape Tree) (1920), an early masterwork by the Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón, revealed that the artist used rags to thickly apply the paint. In these areas, paint delicately projects off the surface of the work, bestowing a sense of tactility to this depiction of the light and coast of the Caribbean—it is a technique that conservators revealed could not be achieved by using traditional brushes. Works by Nicaraguan artist Armando Morales show experimentation of a different kind. By alternating between applying layers of oil paint and carefully sanding down the picture plane, Morales created works with unconventional, glossy surfaces. Yet, beyond their surface sheen, they reveal a deeply woven texture of paint beneath their surface. Conservators worked to protect early experiments with this technique, known to be extremely fragile, and found that later works in the Brillembourg collection reveal how he perfected his method, building ever-more stable surfaces and monumental paintings.

More about the findings is published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

About Tanya Brillembourg and the Brillembourg Collection of Latin American Art
Born in Venezuela, Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg now lives in Caracas and Madrid and is considered a leading Ibero-American philanthropist. Mrs. Brillembourg acts as Honoree Advisor for Ideobox Art Space, an experimental contemporary art venue for single-artist and collective exhibitions in Miami and is also an Honorary Trustee at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is on the Board of Directors of one of the most important media groups in Latin America, the Capriles Group in Venezuela that, among other ventures, publishes the third-largest newspaper in the region. She is a founding member of the art festivals PINTA London and PINTA New York, and co-founder of IdeoBox Art Space in Miami. She sponsors and works with the New World Symphony, Miami Beach, Florida, where she is a member of the Trustees Committee. She has been a member of the Guardian Angels of Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for over sixteen years.

On the topic of sharing her collection with others, Mrs. Brillembourg remarked, "Art should be where people can see it, contemplate it and identify with it. To have art in my home just so that people can come and say that I have good taste? That is not my style. Never!"

Mrs. Brillembourg is dedicated to supporting the arts and children’s healthcare initiatives. In 2003, she founded the SaludArte Foundation, a growing nonprofit organization in America and Spain that offers medical assistance to families with financial needs and brings art programs, social integration and educational activities to hospitals, schools and correctional facilities.

"SaludArte’s main mission is to introduce art to children and youngsters regardless of their degree of exclusion, sickness or disability: to bring art to everyone," said Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg. "When children with cerebral palsy or mental disabilities or from marginalized backgrounds attempt to explore music, dance, or the visual arts, they are faced with many kinds of architectural and educational barriers. The arts are our best tool for facilitating our mission."

Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring 19 essays, biographies of the artists represented, 180 color illustrations and an interview with the collector, Tanya Capriles de Brillembourg, by Mari Carmen Ramírez. The catalogue has been researched and written by a team of writers and contributors associated with the International Center for the Arts of the Americas and is an example of how exhibition projects can serve as catalysts for the production of new knowledge. Catalogue contributors include Michael Wellen, Ph.D., Assistant Curator of Latin American Art; María Gaztambide, Director ICAA Documents Project; Marcela Guerrero, ICAA Research Coordinator; Rachel Mohl, Curatorial Assistant, Latin American Art; James Oles, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer in Art, Wellesley College, and Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art, Davis Museum and Cultural Center; Abigail McEwen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Latin American Art, University of Maryland; Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Ph.D. Independent Curator; and Mari Carmen Ramírez, Ph.D. It will be distributed by Yale University Press.

Organization and Funding
Intersecting Modernities: Latin American Art from The Brillembourg Capriles Collection is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Generous funding is provided by Luther King Capital Management and Leslie and Brad Bucher.

About the Latin American Art Department and the ICAA at the MFAH
Since its inception in 2001, the Latin American Art Department at the MFAH has acquired more than 550 works of modern and contemporary Latin American art, including a pivotal private collection of 100 works: the Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, first exhibited in 2007. In addition, major works by Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gego, Gyula Kosice, Hélio Oiticica, Xul Solar, Joaquín Torres-García, Cildo Meireles, Luis Jiménez, Daniel Martínez and Teresa Margolles, among many others, have entered the MFAH collection. Significant exhibitions include Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (2004); Gego, Between Transparency and the Invisible (2005); Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color (2006); Constructing a Poetic Universe: The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American Art (2007); and Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time (2011). The department has also established the "Partners in Art" program with the Fundación Gego in Caracas, the Cruz-Diez Foundation in Paris and The Brillembourg Capriles Collection of Latin American Art in Miami, all of which provide long-term loans to the MFAH for use in exhibitions, research and publications.

The International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) was established with the Latin American Art Department. ICAA’s mission is to pioneer research of the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latino artists—from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States—and to educate audiences in order to transform the understanding of Latin American and Latino visual arts while opening new avenues of intercultural dialogue and exchange.

Most recently, the MFAH and ICAA launched a digital archive of some 10,000 primary source materials, culled by hundreds of researchers based in 16 cities in the U.S. and throughout Latin America. The online archive is available worldwide, free of charge at www.icaadocs.mfah.org and is intended as a catalyst for the future of a field that has been notoriously lacking in accessible resources. The phased, multi-year launch began with 2,500 documents from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest, capping the 10th-anniversary year for the Latin American program at the MFAH. The first volume in a companion series of 13 annotated books was published, with subsequent volumes in the series published annually.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH)
Founded in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is among the 10 largest art museums in the United States. Located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the MFAH comprises two gallery buildings, a sculpture garden, theater, two art schools and two libraries, with two house museums, for American and European decorative arts, nearby. The encyclopedic collection of the MFAH numbers some 64,000 works and embraces the art of antiquity to the present.

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